A Mind Full of Fangs
by Leylia Wolfe
Summary: Massive rewrite of the movie. Keeping the characters. Fixing the plot. New villains. The UAC has military interests, but what does this matter to a tactical squad sent to enforce quarantine. Staff Sergeant John Grimm lives through hell made real. When he wakes up in military custody, they did something to his mind. Her face isn't real, but won't go away. They're setting hell free.
1. Chapter 1

**A.N: I've been writing this story for a VERY long time. This is a rewrite of the live-action movie DooM that was suppose to be an adaptation of the DooM video games. I personally enjoyed the movie because one of my favorite actors is the main protagonist, and I enjoyed the concept for the plot. But I recognize it in NO way does the original games any justice. This is my take on the storyline which meshes concepts from the movie, games, and a few of my own ideas. I decided to post this after receiving a slew of feedback from username bibliophilea (I hope I spelled that right). This User was wonderfully polite and constructive, and something about their attitude and nuisance has encouraged me to comeback to this long winded story I've toyed with for so long. So thank you bibliophilea. Whether you are familiar with DooM or not I hope you find interest and enjoy this story for as long as it lasts.**

For a room so base and dull, it overflowed with character and life that contradicted the cheap furniture and stainless steel bed railings, spat at the cramped, windowless space and fluorescent lighting, and mocked the drab grey walls with edge worn posters and torn-out pages of _Sports Illustrated_. An old battered sound system howled a popular rock song with an overpaid guitarist. The guts of an underhanded, and presumably over-ripe, orange splattered across the open center walkway of the military barracks as it collide with a metal baseball bat. In the corner a lanky young man, hardly more than a boy, lay on his bed reading a comic book, but for all his languid posture, his was sheepish and tense which was not entirely in part of the unfortunately thin mattress and rough sheets.

A dark-skinned man with a pair of sunglasses perched on his head lounged on a bunk and hooted with joy in time with the digital chirps and explosions that scratched from the speakers of an out-of-date portable video game his held in hands. Beside his bed was a duffle bag packed to bursting. Scattered duffle bags decorated the floor throughout the room.

A man, who resembled an especially grimy pale rat with greasy blond hair plastered to his scalp with gel and a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, paced back and forth. Muttering under his breath, he glanced at the wrist watch he held in his hand. His impatience reached a breaking point and he slapped the watch with a loud _clang_ on the rail of his bunk and bit out and angry comment:

"This is bullshit," He snarled, "Six months without a weekend, and the damn transport's five minutes late. That's five minutes R&amp;R I ain't never gonna get back. "

The dark-skinned man snorted and glanced away from his game briefly.

"Relax Portman. Besides, what you doing over leave that's got you in such a hurry."

The blond man sniggered, "Second I get off that transport I'm heading straight down to El Honto and locking myself in a motel room with a bottle of tequila and three she-boys." He cackled, looking very satisfied in his Hawaiian shirt and sockless white loafers.

"You sick man."

Another orange whistled past Portman, just barely missing his head. He jumped away on reflex, and the orange struck the hand of an older, weathered man who sat quietly in his own bunk. He snapped closed a little black book embellished with a thin gold cross, and tore open the rind of the battered fruit.

"Shut up Portman," his voice rumbled dangerously "I'm sick of your filth."

Portman sneered at him, but edged away all the same. Another orange smashed into the locker next to the man thumbing at his game. Gregory Schofield was his name, popularly known as Duke in his current occupation. He flinched and mumbled a startled curse as chunks of orange and juice rained on him. He glared at the batter and his pitcher. The stout and soft-spoken Asian man Katsuhiko Kumanosuke Takahashi, or more simply Mac, watched him with a blank, well rehearsed, look of innocence. A look perfected by a childhood of structured culture, and intellectual grooming, which he would, in the end exchange for the life of a soldier. The batter wad an enormous man with a broad face and large nose. Where Duke's skin was the color of pale mohogany, his childhood friend had skin that resembled varnished ebony. Roark "Destroyer" Gannon shrugged off the other man's glare. Eventually, Duke contented himself with brushing the shreds of fruit off of his lap and game screen.

Just as things settled back to the buzz of restrained boredom, there was a metallic snap followed immediately by a loud crash from down the hall that shook the walls- causing the aged stereo to cut out and clearing the way for a loud curse to echo unhindered into the room. The tense boy in the corner jumped to his feet with wide, startled eyes.

"Relax kid." came a voice with a tone like gravel. A man in his late twenties with welsh black hair and brilliant blue eyes was seated at a bench in front of a brushed stainless steel table cleaning an M24 sniper rifle. "Wolfe's just snapped the weight rack on that cheap ass bench again."

"Oh…" The young man mumbled, blushing furiously. Mark Dantalian, the newest and youngest edition to their ragtag band of merry men. Fresh off the parade ground just in time for leave. Mark assumed he'd have to wait another six months before he'd get his first call-to-action and official call sign, but the RRTS "Hellfighters" could be deployed on at anytime a job needed doing. Often a job done quick and, more than not, done dirty.

With the radio still silenced, and leaving the room with tinnitus-like ringing, the sound of heavy footsteps approached down the hallway from the source of disturbance.

A tall red-headed woman swept into the room and snatched the MP3 player from the doc on the stereo. Her hands were wrapped in white cloth tape, and her hair was darkened to a deep auburn at the roots from the sweat that ran down the line of a severe jaw. She stuffed the music player into one of the duffel bags, clearly hers, and snatched a towel from a shelf, vigorously wiping away the sweat while she twisted and popped her neck. She yawned massively, cracking her jaw and flashing a set of straight, white teeth.

"What no song of the day Wolfe?" Duke chided amiably looking up from his game again.

Blowing out a massive breath from her nose, she paused to look at him momentarily. Her expression was blank. Without a word, she spun on her heal making to head back down the hallway. She stopped by the sound system, punchinging several buttons before hammering her fist down on to the ancient piece of scrap. Finally it sprang back to life sputtering out an over-played song on the local FM station.

She disappeared down the hallway.

"… Ok…" Duke rolled his eyes, and once more turned back to his game.

Footsteps on grated steel pulled everyone's attention to the top of the stairs off to one side of the barrack, leading to the office of their Commanding Officer. Gunnery Sergeant Asher "Sarge" Mahonin, tanned, heavily muscled, and intimidating, stood imposingly at the top with an ominous look on his face.

"Looks like leave's just been cancelled boys."

A chorus of muffled groans erupted from the throats of the Unit 6 RRTS marines.

Duke stifled a curse and stuffed his game into his, now unnecessary, duffle.

"You gotta a problem with that Duke?" Sarge demanded with a menacing edge, catching the poorly curbed derogative.

"Me Sarge? Hell no I love my job." Duke replied stiffly, barely keeping the sarcasm from his voice.

Sarge nodded, it was enough for now. "Suit up gentlemen. We leave in five." He directed his attention at Mark who was hesitated to move with everyone else "You too. Welcome to the Rapid Response Tactical Squad, the double R-T-S." The young man nodded and veritably bounced after the rest of his new team.

They filed from the room to their separate lockers in the hall. The dark-haired man was last to rise from his seat at the bench. Sarge stopped him.

"Not this time John. You're staying behind."

'John' stared at him in hooded disbelief "You're bullshitting me."

Sarge shook his head "No Bullshit. Look, just take the leave... We're going to Olduvai."

There was pause at the mention of the Scientific Research Center which only a few decades ago made history as the first scientific establishment built on the Earth's sister planet, Mars. Run by the Union Aerospace Corporation, it was the greatest scientific, not to mention architectural, achievement of the millenium so far. Sarge could see the painful memories bubbling up though his Staff Seargent John "Reaper" Grimm hid them better than most could.

"Is that an order?" he asked.

"It's a recommendation."

John nodded; a storm of conflict roiling beneath. He snatched up the rifle, slapped the cartridge in, and brushed past his C.O. heading toward the lockers without another word. Sarge could see the hesitation in his step.

Passing the rest of the unit, Sarge headed for the room they used as a gym of sorts. It was stuffed with weights and benches, an old set of barbells and punching bag; it was really only big enough for one or two people to use at a time. One of the benches was sporting a broken weight rack that looked as though it had been crudely re-welded one too many times. The matching bar for the bench was lying on the ever-so-slightly dented metal floor as a result of its recent fall.

Standing facing away from the door, Corporal Alexandria "Fang" Wolfe held her arm straight away from her side, holding up a weight, stamped with a bold '25' on the side, and slowly lowered it. When her arm was flat to her side she raised it again and repeated the motion. She breathed in as the weight rose and out as it lowered; muscles in her shoulders and back flexed tightly under the unevenly tanned and wind-burned skin. Her hair stuck out oddly from being mussed with the towel earlier, but she ignored it and kept her eyes squeezed shut in concentration.

"Wolfe."

"Yes Sarge." She said between her controlled breaths.

"You can hear from down the hall, leave's cancelled, suit up now."

She put the weight down on the rack "Sorry sir," she said calmly "I wasn't aware I was gonna be allowed on anymore missions till the hearing went through."

"Don't pull that shit with me Wolfe, go suit up before I shove your sorry ass in that damn vest myself." The large man snapped, his eyes flashed dangerously.

"Yes sir." She said, failing to flinch at his tone

She slide past into the hallway, despite her outward deference, her back was ridged, exuding defiance bordering on insolence towards the higher ranking man.

Five minutes later they were on the tarmac of the Armed Forces Base in Twenty-nine Palms California, heads turned down against the wind from the rotors of their assault and transport helicopter.

Fully suited they were an intimidating group. Black from head to toe in standard issues boot and heavy cargo pants. Long-sleeved black jackets and Kevlar vests with addition body armor consisting of Kevlar plates sewn into the collar and shoulders. They piled into the helicopter, finding their individually assigned gear on the racks beside their cramped seats.

As they picked up their assault rifles, a computerized female voice purred out their IDs when they gripped the palm reader, arming the weapon.

The weathered soldier with his little black book, Corporal Eric Fantom, picked up his first.

"_RRTS Special Ops Clearance Verified. Handle I.D. Goat._"

Roark Gannon picked up his next, a large chain gun draped in belts of ammunition.

"_RRTS Special Ops Clearance Verified. Handle I.D. Destroyer." _He nodded to himself, and his face split into a broad grin.

"Daddy's home."

Corporal Dean Portman.

"_RRTS Special Ops Clearance Verified. Handle I.D. Portman."_

Tech Specialist Katsuhiko Kumanosuke Takahashi.

"_RRTS Special Ops Clearance Verified. Handle I.D. Mac."_

Sergeant Gregory Schofield.

"_RRTS Special Ops Clearance Verified. Handle I.D. Duke."_

"Say my name baby." He said with a smile, admiring the rifle.

Corporal Alexandria Wolfe.

"_RRTS Special Ops Clearance Verified. Handle I.D. Fang."_

Private Mark Dantalian.

"_RRTS Special Ops Clearance Verified. Handle I.D. The Kid."_

"The Kid?" his face fell with disappointment, and he flopped into his seat with a sigh- hanging his loosely between his knees.

Gunnery Sergeant Asher Mahonin.

"_RRTS Special Ops Clearance Verified. Handle I.D. Sarge."_

The C.O. turned and addressed his team and the pilot. The doors began to slide shut.

"Alright men let's get this sh-."

He cut off as hand caught the door.

Fully suited, Staff Sergeant John Grimm, climbed silently into the helicopter and took his own assault rifle off the rack.

"_RRTS Special Ops Clearance Verified. Handle I.D. Reaper."_

He took his seat. Sarge continued as though nothing had happened.

In a lull of the conversation, Portman caught a very nervous looking Kid, and allowed himself a little smirk. Unable to resist, he leaned toward Kid and beckoned him closer, his face twisting into a yellow-toothed grin.

"You know couple days ago I asked the Sarge for some pussy. The next day he brought you on."

Kid snapped back, a look of shock bordering on horror crossing his face and Portman cackled, thoroughly enjoying himself.

Reaper shifted his gun managing the perfect mix of casualty and threat.

"Don't give me an excuse Portman." He warned "No one will miss you."

Portman sneered at the higher ranking man for few moments before giving a snort, and leaned back in his seat without a care. Several silent moments passed before Kid's curiosity worked against his better judgment. He leaned toward Portman, and in a hushed voice said;

"If you wanted… you know… why not…" He finished his statement by twitching his chin toward the stolid red-head, and the only female any of the unit had seen in six months.

Portman turned his head lazily to leer at the woman seated a few spots over in the corner of the fuselage. Catching her icy stare he turned back with a knowing smirk, and leaned forward as he spoke.

"How's 'bout you go try tappin' that ass. And if you come back with your balls still attached, let me know. Maybe I'll give it a whirl."

Having not considered the idea, Kid glanced tentatively over in the Fang's direction. She lounged with a leg up against the metal frame of the helicopter, her rifle laid across her chest. When they made eye contact, he met a pair of steely grey eyes that narrowed dangerously in his direction.

He blanched and looked away hurriedly. After a moment he swallowed, and plunged in to dangerous waters:

"How do you even know she likes… you know-?"

"Hey Kid."

The voice was quiet, but Kid cracked his head on the metal braces of the fuselage anyway. With a hand vigorously rubbing the rising lumped he looked toward Fang with panic rising in his throat.

"I go both ways, and if anyone here has a problem with that I'll knock his ass back to 2000 where his bigoted sentiments can rot." She said all with eyes that dared anyone to step up to her challenge.

Kid, heeding the warning, just nodded quickly and prayed Fang never found any excuse to point that rifle in his general direction.

The helicopter took off with the rotors screaming for purchase in the air. It whooshed over the barren desert, breaking the silence of the night with the heavy thumping of its motorized blades.

On board Sarge launched into an _en transit_ briefing over the mission. Calling it a quarantine and retrieval mission, he began with a video sent from the UAC. The video was poor-quality at best. It showed and old, balding scientist between intermittent bursts of static who sagged with abject terror and sweated visibly even through the dim lighting. His eyes fluttered and blink nervously as he spoke into the camera. Behind him crashing sounds and screams came from the only door within the frame.

_"This is Doctor Carmack at Classified Research, Olduvai. ID 6627."_ His voice shook with fear. A snarl erupted from behind the door at his back, accompanied by a massive bang. The metal shrieked in protest.

_We have a level five breach. Implement quarantine procedures now, I repeat, implement quarantine procedures now!"_

There was a thunderous crash followed by a horrific scream before the screen went black; Sarge removed the disk from the console, and turned to his team, looking them over. He brimmed with confidence and surety that some would say reminisced arrogance.

"UAC has shut down the facility at Olduvai. We need to locate the team, eliminate, and secure the facility."

Kid inquired as to the threat, Duke ready responded with a sarcastic remark that turned the very green Private's ears a bright shade of crimson.

Done with his briefing, Sarge took his seat across from Reaper. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. His expression was intent, and his eyes showed a clear note of weighing evaluation.

"How long has it been?"

Reaper waited before responding, scrutinizing his C.O.'s cause for asking.

An ulterior motive was obvious, Sarge wanted to know if he could handle himself in a place where his life once fell apart, but he could find no way to avoid such a direct question. So he obliged an answer.

"Ten years."

"You sure she's even still up there?"

Without pausing to consider, the brooding man nodded

"Yeah… I guess you gotta face your demons sometime."

**To Be Continued**


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: I Updated! SHOCKING isn't it? Anyway, this has been burning a hole in my hard drive for literally years, but I still like the concept and unfortunately I'm stuck. I have a great deal more written past this so I'm putting up everything now in multiple chapters. If it gets any interest and I get some good criticism/ideas I will rewrite/continue where I left off. Especially once I get past... dun DUN DUUUUUUNNNN... the TWIST! Anyway, enjoy I promise this isn't just an OC insert.**

The helicopter thundered over the barren landscape of the Nevada Desert. The lights of a runway cut a perforated line through the inky darkness, ending in a bright spattering of lights marking the entrance to the facility lying deep beneath the desert surface.

They landed with a thud that jostled them in their seats. The door hissed open, and they piled out onto the asphalt. A narrow structure rose from the ground, the two halves slid apart. A sleek stainless steel elevator rose between them- waiting. The doors opened to a featureless grey interior. Wasting no time, they crammed into the elevator. Kid stared awestruck at the structure- realizing he'd been left behind, Kid shook himself from his stupor and rushed into the elevator. Once inside, Sarge rounded on him and growled harshly.

"You hesitate, people die."

The young soldier was taken aback by the anger in his C.O. voice. His cast his eyes downward in shame.

The floor sank beneath their feet as the elevator plunged down into the Earth.

When their journey ended, the doors slid open to reveal an eloquent, albeit utilitarian, lobby bustling with UAC scientists and assistants going about their work. Sticking out horribly and drawing a great deal of attention, the group of marines were met by a clean and smartly dressed employee. He greeted them and introduced himself as the consoler for public relations at UAC, his name was Sanford Crosby. He then led them through one of the several branching hallways.

The end of the hallway opened to a circular room with a high ceiling. The floor sloped, funneling gently toward the center. The rest of chamber was entirely empty, but for a lighted control panel. A walkway circumnavigated the periphery. Several more hallways branched off into various other sections of the underground laboratory.

"Welcome to the Ark." Sanford said, gesturing to the entirety of the room. He then approached the console and began the Ark transfer sequence.

"Stay away from the core," he warned "or you might get sucked in."

The generic female voiced simulation, narrated the Ark activation sequence. Kid muttered a nervous question to Goat.

"Have you ever… done this before?"

The seasoned soldier responded without looking at the young recruit.

"Once… a training mission."

Now far from assured, Kid paled. Duke laughed at his expense.

"Hope you had a good breakfast."

The humming of the machine intensified and Sarge turned to the primped suit manning the console and instructed him as to the procedure after they were through. No one gets through, no one comes out, not without RRTS express permission.

The Ark was to be shut down for the standard six hour quarantine.

With that the countdown began. A silver gelatinous blob formed at the core. Defying the laws of physics as it levitated eye level above the ground. The countdown reached the last five seconds and Reaper stepped forward to take the first plunge.

The whooshing, whistling, and screaming of white noise assault their ears as they traveled via worm hole more than 40 million miles to the sister planet.

Mars.

Their bodies stretched and contorted outside space-time as they were sucked through a dimensional tunnel the equivalent in diameter to a pencil. Just seconds later they were deposited one by one into the ark center at the UAC Mars Science and Research Center, Olduvai.

Unfortunately, having your molecules stretched and snapped back together tended to have negative effects on one's body. Particularly one's constitution.

Each soldier hit the floor feeling nauseous, heads stuffed with cotton and pounding horribly.

Some fared better than others, eventually the wooziness passed. However, Portman, the Kid, and Duke all found themselves doubled over hacking out their last meal.

Destroyer patted his childhood friend on the back and grinned at the irritated look on his face as Duke realized not everyone had lost their lunch. The site of Kid and Portman wiping their mouths seemed to offer some consolation. Portman coughed a few more times with the bile burning his throat. In a shaky voice he protested angrily.

"Why we gotta come all the way out here." He complained "Can't the UAC rent-a-cops take care of this bullshit."

"Is it always that rough?" Kid choked out between breaths as he straightened himself up, loosening the screaming knots in his back.

"Believe me; it used to be a lot rougher."

They all turned in the direction of the unfamiliar voice, and a man equally as well groomed as Sanford came into view. However, from the waist down this man had a streamlined cyber bionic wheel chair, hardwired to his torso.

"There was a time when ark travel was susceptible to… let's just say… major turbulence."

Clearly confused, Kid approached Reaper.

"What does he mean?"

"He means, he went to one galaxy, his ass went to another." The older soldier responded bluntly.

The half mechanical man scowled, his face darkening at the callousness of the statement.

"Call it a small miscalculation." He continued irritably "Unbelievable as it seems, UAC does make the odd, tiny mistake."

Ending the conversation, the wheeled man whirled around and started for the corridor exit.

"Marcus Pinzerrowski. You call me Pinky." He said "Follow me."

As they did so Duke heard a crinkling sound behind him and turned to find Alexandria Wolfe, "Fang", gnawing on a protein bar.

"How can you eat after that?" he exclaimed gesturing toward the center of the room, his stomach churned and he tried not to look at the evidence of their arrival still coating the floor.

The woman shrugged.

"I went on 'n empty stomach." She grumbled around a full mouth. She swallowed and tore off another chunk "Now I'm just fuckin' hungry."

She wolfed down the rest of the bar, and a queasy Duke just shook his head and turned away.

As they reached yet another console, and Pinky situated himself behind it, Sarge suddenly realized how empty the area was with the lack of personnel roaming the surrounding corridors.

"Where are the other scientists?" Sarge asked.

"In the atrium." Pinky replied, busily tapping in commands to the computer console identical to its sibling back on Earth.

Sarge nodded and filed the information away, setting his mind to the business at hand.

"Put us up Pinky." He ordered and the vehicular man struck the enter key with a satisfied nod.

"Activating remote personal surveillance."

Sarge turned to his men.

"Alright circle up. On my count. Three. Two. One!"

All nine marines arranged in a circle facing center raised their guns to the ready; barrels up but pointed over and beyond the shoulders of the man opposite. All except Portman who slouched lazily with his assault rifle pointed vertically toward the ceiling, earning him a glare from his C.O.

"Cams up and running." Pinky confirmed, nodding to Sarge.

"Alright people." Sarge began "This area is now code red. No one gets in or out and it stays ours. At. All. Costs." He nodded to Mac.

"Mac, stay here with our friend and secure the door. The rest of you with me. Move out."

With that the unit fell into a loosely conglomerated formation and followed the C.O. through the doorway into yet another lobby, again, brimming with people. Everything from students, to professionals. Laborers, families, even children; from every point of the spectrum, but they all gawked. This hub of sorts was likely Pinky's atrium. The entirety of the base's personnel were gathered there at the moment. While Sarge dealt with the obviously skittish security staff, who clearly wanted to evacuate the base, an official no go, Portman wasted no time in fraternizing with the younger, female employees.

He descended upon a group of attractive women, a hungry smiled affixed to his face.

"Sorry ladies, we're at a level five quarantine, so I'm just gonna have to strip search you girls." Despite his attempt at a "professional" pickup line, the poon hound was unsuccessful in keeping the excitement from his voice. The women responded with raised eyebrows and crossed arms.

"I don't think so…"

Before the rejection could be finished, Portman, without missing a beat, brushed passed the uncooperative women and latched onto another potential target.

"We're under a level five quarantine so I'm just gonna have to stri-"

The blond woman he turned his attentions on, swept past without so much as gracing Portman with a sideways glance, her attention was entirely focused upon someone else. That someone being the Sarge.

Sarge reined Portman in quickly and introduced the woman.

"Men, this is Doctor Samantha Grimm. She's been assigned to retrieve data from the lab."

She nodded to the sergeant, accepting his introduction professionally, but Doctor Samantha Grimm was an imposing person despite her smaller stature. Tall for a woman, but only shoulder height to the C.O. She was what one called the "rugged scientist type," a woman who clearly would seem just as a home in a lab coat as she would in a dusty pair of pants and boots out in the field. Her fair hair was clipped back away from her face, and she gauged them all with an appraising look. In particular, the dark haired man standing directly behind the towering unit leader.

"Hello John." She greeted stiffly.

"Hello Samantha." Reaper replied, equally discomforted by her presence.

Duke, on the other hand, was practically purring.

"Hello Samantha." He breathed out, catching himself before he let out a whistle, seemingly unaware to the evident tension between Reaper and the doctor.

Ignoring Duke, Reaper cleared his throat.

"Sarge, this is a code red operation." He almost drawled out the military vernacular, attempting to hide the edge in his voice. "We really don't have room for passengers."

Samantha bristled angrily "Excuse me, but I have orders to retrieve data from three different servers; Anthropology, Archeology, and Genetics."

"This is a military operation _Doctor,_ not a field trip. We aren't here to retrieve your science homework."

"Look I got an idea," she snapped "Why don't _you_ ask your C.O. what your orders are?"

If Sarge had been any other man, he would have wilted under Reaper's intense gaze, but as the Commanding Officer, it was, in a sense, his duty to maintain his units understanding of the mission. Also… he was literally caught in the middle of their… spat. With reserve he recited their _exact_ orders.

"We are to contain and neutralize the threat, protect the civilians, and retrieve…" he paused a moment before continuing "Retrieve UAC property."

Closing his eyes, Reaper exhaled stiffly, in effort to calm himself. Luckily for him, Samantha had never been one to gloat.

"Are we finally done here? Because I've got work to do." She spun around and strode forward; clearly expecting them to follow at her heels. Sarge turned to Reaper as they did so.

"You chose this Reaper. This isn't going to spoil my day?"

"No sir." Reaper responded darkly and followed after.

Duke caught up to Reaper as they walked, the entire affair having peaked his interest.

"Please tell me you didn't let a fine piece of ass like that get away from you?" he prodded good-naturedly.

"She's my sister." Reaper deadpanned.

Duke blinked, his head jerking back in shock. "No shit."

A broad grin split his face "Well then…"

Destroyer came abreast of the dark romantic, and shook his head.

"What?"

The team, plus Doctor Grimm and the Olduvai security, navigated their way through the Mars facility until Sam brought them to a corridor blocked by a set of heavy doors. Throughout all of it she gave a running overview of the facilities run by Dr. Carmack and his six person team, including mentioning Carmack's authority in the weapon's development sector under his charge. Upon reaching the doors into the quarantined sector she dropped the bombshell.

"In one of the carbon-dating labs and internal phone was left of the hook." She stated turning to them.

"Did you get anything?" Sarge asked, Sam and the security detail exchanged looks and she nodded. The guard held up a recording device and hit the play back button. The speaker erupted with a burst of gruesome screams and strange guttural snarling. After a few disturbing seconds the guard killed the recording.

A short moment of silence filled the gap before Sarge nodded to Doctor Grimm.

"Open the door."

She obliged by typing in her security code allowing the door to slide open effortlessly.

"Portman, Goat," Sarge barked jerking his head to the now open doorway "Take point."

Both soldiers nodded and ghosted past, guns at the ready. Portman pulled out a handheld chemical scanner.

"Magnesium, Chromium, lead." He read off "It's all normal."

"All clear." Goat confirmed and the rest of the team slipped through followed by the Doctor.

"Pinky. Schematic." Sarge ordered

"_Uploaded to you now."_ Pinky obliged _"Carmack's facility is isolated from the rest of the complex. The airlock is the only way in or out."_

Now with a clear picture of the station. Sarge started dishing out orders. Sending Kid and Destroyer to Carmack's office, Portman and Goat off to Genetics, and Reaper and Fang with the Doctor on the salvage op. He and Duke would take the weapons the department.

They started into the dark corridors, Portman and Goat sweeping as they went. Eying the dark corners and hazy passages branching away from the airlock.

"Alright fluorescent markers on each room when you clear it. Go!"

With that the unit split, heading in their separate directions. Guns at the ready.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam insisted on taking the lead as the two marines and the scientist made their way toward the archeological section of the quartered structure. Reaper attempted to protest but received a nasty a glare as the result. However, neither of the siblings felt it prudent to begin yet another argument.

So while Sam took the front Reaper was forced to walk immediately behind her while Fang took her usual position at the rear. Aside from some chatter over the radio, and a premature scare from the Kid, dubbed by Destroyer as "Wasting Ghosts", the walk to the dig site was strangely uneventful. They reached the lab and entered. Reaper cleared the room, and Fang locked the door behind them. Sam bee-lined to the nearest console and inserted a long, green rectangular disk drive, made of flexible polymers, into the slot on the computer, and began downloading the data from the system.

"How long will you need?" Reaper asked.

"thirty-minutes." Sam replied not taking her eyes from the screen.

Nothing more was said. The silence stretched on, growing steadily more awkward as time progressed. Finally Sam glanced up curiously from the screen to find John examining the skeletal remains of some humanoid creature in the glass display cases.

"So…" she began "Reaper… as in Grimm."

"They're marines Sam, not poets." He replied, still with his back to her.

"Besides, it could be worse."

"Oh yeah?" she raised a doubtful eye brow.

"Fang's real name is Wolfe."

Glancing in the direction of the reserved woman still standing beside the door,

"Ah, well at least they didn't just call you Wolf." Sam added helpfully.

The red-head gave a surprisingly loud snort.

"The name was already taken. Anyway, I think if I'm just gonna guard the door I'll do it outside. There's way too much 'sibling rivalry' tension in here for me to be comfortable." She directed her eyes at Reaper, waiting for the approval of the higher ranking soldier. He nodded. She turned away from them, and unlocked the door, stepping out into the narrow hall.

Reaper strode across the room to lock the door again then confirmed his comm-link with Fang, just in case. Satisfied he went back to examining the creatures in the cases. He reached the largest and paused. Inside the case, a creature, somewhere between and human and a chimpanzee, was huddled around an adolescent of the same species. Their bones were bleached a sickly yellow, and something about them felt… wrong.

Sam noticed immediately when Reaper hesitated at the skeleton "Oh yeah meet Lucy." She said just a touch sardonic "Lucy this is my brother John. Another creature from the long lost past."

"You found human remains?" he asked almost in disbelief, missing the snarky remark.

"Humanoid," she corrected "Lucy and her child were our first major find. We're bringing out more every day."

Reaper suddenly rounded on her.

"You reopened the dig." His voice was harsh and dangerous.

"I know I should have told you." Sam admonished "But I figured it wasn't something I could jot down in a yearly birthday card."

She finished bitterly.

He turned away from her, clearly upset by her decision.

"It's been stabilized." She tried to reason with him, but only succeeded in making him angrier. He turned on her again.

"Bullshit!" he shouted, startling her with his reaction. She recovered quickly.

"You wanna talk about dangerous, like you took a desk job." She snapped ruefully. "I'm a forensic archeologist, John I go where the work is."

Both of them turned away from each other and attempted to restrain themselves.

Sam was the first to speak again.

"You want to know why I'm up here. Then come here, I'll show you." She tapped a few keys and plugged the drive into the computer. Giving in, Reaper came and stood behind her, gun in hand leaning over her shoulder.

"This is Lucy's chromosome profile," she said "Notice anything different?"

He gave her a dark look "My molecular genetics is a bit rusty." He replied irritably.

"Come on John. What's the first thing Dad taught us to look for?"

Giving in yet again, he took a closer look at the pictured rendered on the screen. After a moment it dawned on him.

"She's got twenty-four pairs of chromosomes."

Sam nodded "Humans only have twenty-three."

"What does the extra pair do?" Reaper asked now genuinely curious. Curiosity toward a science that he hadn't felt since the accident so many years ago. Sam went on. Happy to answer her brother's question.

"It makes her super human." She said "Super fit, super strong, super intelligent."

She got up and walked over to Lucy's case, gesturing to the skeletons inside.

"Her cells divide fifty times faster than our own, which means she can heal almost instantly. The fossil record indicates that they conquered disease. We found no evidence of genetic disorders, no viruses, and no cancers." Sam finished having a hard time controlling her excitement over the vastness of it all.

Reaper, however, was not as enthusiastic.

"So what, they were just naturally superior?"

Sam launched into another tangent. She started making her way back to the computer as she did so. Her mind working two things at once.

"No, not natural. You see the earliest fossil remains we've found only have twenty-three. We suspect the twenty-fourth chromosome may be synthetic."

"Bioengineered?" Reaper caught the implication immediately. Sam smiled while leaning over at the computer.

"Long word for a marine."

He ignored her.

The silence went on for a few more seconds before Sam finally spoke again.

"Does it ever bother you that you could have spent your life looking through a microscope instead of a sniper scope?"

Reaper was quiet for a few seconds more, thinking it over; a faraway look came to his eyes.

"Things don't always work out the way you planned." He said finally turning away from her. He changed the subject back to the remains in the case.

"So if they're so smart how come they're so dead?" he asked

Sam shrugged and looked back to the computer.

"We don't know. Maybe they just went with time…" She trailed off. Reaper seemed unconvinced. The skeleton was postured oddly. Wires in its bones rigged in an attempt to recreate the position in which it was found within the Martian rock, the larger of the two specimens shielding the smaller, as though a mother were protecting her child. Their faces were affixed in comical phantom screams. The lack of flesh on their bones made them seem as though they were laughing.

"You don't shield a baby from time…"

The radio crackled to life with Goats voice coming through the speaker.

_"We've got movement ahead"_

Reaper bolted for the door.

"Stay here." He shouted over his shoulder. "And lock the door."

He typed in the code and exited. Fang was just outside, ready and alert, they started down the hall.

_"Fucking doors been ripped open."_ came Goat's voice again, tinged with surprise _"There's something in Carmack's office."_

Suddenly the sounds of gun fire burst through the radio. The actual sounds echoed through the complex. Reaper sprang into action, sprinting down the corridor all the while shouting into his mic.

"Report! Report!"

_"Contact!"_ Goat shouted in response "_Moving through Carmack's office fast!"_

Kid and Destroyer signaled their response en route. Reaper raced around a corner. Fang, an experienced enough soldier, easily followed, staying low. Up ahead he heard more gunfire. Before he turned the next corner he flattened himself against the wall hearing the ricochets rocket off the adjacent wall, just beyond the turn up a flight of stairs.

"Hold your fire!" he ordered, the shooting ceased, he ducked around checking quickly. Kid was standing stiff against the wall, gun barrel to the ceiling. All clear, Reaper tore off again, Fang at his heals. He collected Kid and Destroyer as he went.

A dark figure darted across an intersection in their path. Reaper followed in pursuit. The next intersection they found Goat and Portman coming up one hallway and Sarge and Duke coming up the other leaving only one.

"This way." He shouted, turning right. The hall spiraled down a staircase and landing into a basement of sorts. They caught another flash movement disappearing around a doorway.

Skidding to halt, guns up they approached the room cautiously, knowing it was dead end. They heard shuffling, and labored breathing in the corner.

"If you have a weapon, drop it." Reaper ordered. There was a startled clang against the wall. Reaper approached the doorway and whipped around the frame, gun and light trained on their runner. Cowering against the wall, the emaciated, trembling form of the scientist from the flight video, Dr. Todd Carmack, shied from the light hiding behind what appeared to be the severed arm of a woman. At Reaper's advance he flinched violently, throwing the arm at his feet.

Sarge and the rest of the unit swung around the doorway and froze.

"What the fu…" someone trailed off.

Suddenly Sam was shoving her way through the squad of marines.

"Sam I thought I told you to stay in the lab!" Reaper snapped, angered by her reckless appearance, but she ignored him and approached the crazed doctor.

"Sam stay…"

"He knows me John." She interrupted, slapping his hand away as he reached to stop her.

Slowly she continued toward Carmack.

"Doctor Carmack, it's me Samantha." She said her voice calm and soothing. His eyes were locked on her, filled with terror and insanity.

"I'm not going to hurt you." She continued "Where are the others. Steve and Hilary." She edged a little closer.

Too close for the doctor. He yelped and threw his hand between them. Sam jumped, but took one more cautious step. Carmack shrieked and tore his left ear from his head.

Sam stumbled back "Oh Jesus Christ." She breathed.

Several startled curses rang out behind her. Carmack panted and stared wide eyed at the ear in his hand. Sam fumbled behind her.

"Someone give me a medkit." She said, her voice shaking a little.

Reaper passed her one of the silver packs. She tore it open and pulled out a small bottle of powder and gauze. She approached the doctor once more while he was distracted with the ear. She sprinkled the powder, Quickclot, on his wound then patted the blood away with the gauze. She looked back at the men.

"Help me get him back to the infirmary."

Sarge jerked his head at Duke, who stepped forward and helped the doctor up, supporting him on his shoulder.

"Alright," Sarge started, "While Duke and Dr. Grimm take Carmack to the infirmary, Portman, you and Kid will head to the airlock and dig in. Anything we find that'll try to get away will get driven straight to you."

He looked down at the arm sitting at their feet. "Let's see if the rest of us can find a body that goes with that arm."

At the closest major intersection the unit split into its separate teams. Sam, Duke, supporting Carmack, headed for the medbay where Carmack could be treated by Sam and the doctor currently standing by. Portman, and the Kid headed for the airlock.

Reaper and Goat then split away to search one area of the complex while Sarge and Fang took the other.

Goat and Reaper were just entering the Genetics corridor when Portman reported over the radio, that they'd found the owner of the arm, a crazed woman they were forced to shoot after she attacked them. The discovery of the now two apparently insane scientists had them on edge.

The Staff Sergeant and Corporal entered the Genetics sector cautiously.

Approaching the stairs down to the next area of the base, they took the corner with guns raised, Reaper in front, scrutinizing the sharp turn. Taking the first steps, Reaper jumped at the sound of a loud clang behind him and something metallic bouncing down the steps past his feet, coming to rest at the landing below.

"Goddamn it." Goat hissed behind him. Reaper closed his eyes, and exhaled slowly the frustration building in his chest. After a short pause, he turned back to look at Goat, finding the seasoned soldier rolling up his left sleeve, knife in hand. His gaze lingered a little longer than intended.

"I took his name in vain." Goat explained. Reaper only nodded and turned away again, leaving the fiercely religious man to cut his penance.

Reaper and Goat finished the leg to the Genetics lab without incident, but as they reached the door already marked by Goat's fluorescent 'X' they heard ominous sounds of shuffling and rummaging from inside.

Reaper signaled to Goat to take a position by the door.

"We heard something in Genetics." He reported into the radio in hushed tones, "We're reentering."

_"Copy that Reaper."_ came the response from Sarge.

He nodded to Goat, on his signal they ducked into the dark lab and scanned the room down the barrels of their guns.

Their flashlights illuminated a gruesome scene. The cages of the animals were either left open, or the doors had simply ripped off. Entrails hung from the wires of the kennels. A kidney there, a heart here, intestines strung and woven through, small pools of blood dripped from the desks or accumulated at the bottom of the cages.

"Looks like we missed the party." Reaper observed quietly

"We were just in here." Goat whispered in disbelief, he and Portman having checked the room upon their first sweep. "What happened to all the animals?"

There was light clang and a strange guttural sound from their left. Both men swung their gun barrels to light the opposite side of the room. Catching on the white of a lab coat, they trained on a man standing at a table digging through yet another cage.

Reaper stepped forward carefully.

"Sir RRTS, we're here to help."

The man spun around to face them, clenching a squealing white rat in his hand. He snarled at them, his face contorted and caked in blood, drool, and puss from grotesque boils erupting as his skin, twisted and mutated. Blood smeared the white of his coat all down his neck and chest.

The horrid scientist then brought the distressed mouse to his mouth and tore the head off, the bones crunching loudly. To their disgust he stuffed the rest of the rat into his maw, slurping up the tail as he finished.

"Sir, are you ok?" Reaper tried, knowing full well there was no point.

To confirm his assumption the crazed man snatched a bloodied serrated knife from the table beside the cage and charged.

"Shit! No, no, no. Sir put it down!" Reaper shouted stumbling back and bracing himself to fire.

The man leapt over a table screaming, landing feet from the two soldiers and still coming.

"NO!"

They open fired as the man bounded toward them. The barrage of bullets knocked him off his feet, sending him careening back into the table, knocking it over in the process.

When the man fell they ceased firing. Goat cursed, Reaper sighed in frustration.

_"Contact! Report!"_

"Sarge, it looks like we found one of the missing scientists. There's some weird shit going on." Reaper responded through the radio.

"_Is he dead?"_ Sarge asked

Reaper glanced at the bullet riddled body.

"Yeah, very."

_"Can you ID him?"_

He stepped over to the body and pulled the bloody ID tag from the unrecognizable pulp.

"We've got a Dr. Olsen." He replied "He rushed us, crazy, just like Carmack."

There was a pause on the other side of the link as though Sarge was processing the information.

"Should we bag him and tag him?" Goat asked

_"Negative, continue your search."_

The two men glanced at each other.

"Copy that."

Both men turned to exit the room when something roared behind them. They spun around just in time to dodge a swipe from massive dark figure. In a split second the two men ducked aside and fired. The figure howled in pain and fear and fled through the open doorway.

"Contact!" Reaper shouted into his comm as he and Goat scrambled to their feet and tore off after their attacker.

_"Reaper, what've you got?" _Sarge asked.

"We're chasing something." Reaper responded vaguely, he and Goat doing all they could just to keep up. Damn thing was fast. He skidded around a corner just catching the flash of movement in the dim corridor.

_"What do you mean something?"_ Sarge demanded.

Another corner, Reaper almost lost his footing. Catching the wall with his hand and rushing forward. He got a better look at the figure.

"Something big!" he shouted "Not human!"

_"Godamnit!"_ Sarge snapped _"Give me confirmation on what you see!"_

There was a screech of metal and a clang. Reaper reached the end of the corridor, Goat not far behind. He cursed and punched the wall, in frustration when he saw the torn open manhole.

"It's in the sewers."

The team stood staring into the dark hole descending down into the reeking sewers. The sloshing sounds of sewage drifted up to them along with its various undesirable smells. The heavy manhole cover was thrown uselessly against the wall. Portman openly wore an expression of disgust, the rest of the unit, minus Mac and Duke, remained reserved to idea of crawling in human excrement. Their faces expressionless and flat.

Portman huffed irritably.

"I thought being 'in the shit' was a figure of speech?"

"Just get in the Goddamn hole Portman." Sarge snapped.

Suppressing a groan, the sleazy man threw his gun over his shoulder, slinging it across his back by the strap. He turned around and lowered himself down the manhole clinging to the ladder. The team listened carefully to his descent. A splash signaled his arrival along with a hateful "All clear."

The squad of marines dropped one by one into the filthy, frothing water at the base the ladder, with varying degrees of revulsion crossing their faces.

The flow of the stagnant water was slow, making the smell all the worse as gases were allowed to accumulate along the slower moving pockets. In some places it was beyond gag-worthy and suffocating. The team moved cautiously through the moderately broad tunnels, blinking away the stench and humidity. Hazy and dank, filed with sounds of splashing and dripping, the tunnels were eerie, setting the men on edge. Goat mumbled verses from his bible.

"Be sober. Be vigilant. Because your adversary the devil walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." He quoted softly.

Portman twitched and stared at him irritably "Yeah that's real comforting." He snapped sarcastically, his voice quaking some "That ain't freaking me out at all."

Sarge turn to glare at them, when Portman gave a surprised yell and disappeared beneath the brackish water.

"What the fuck?!" and several alarmed shouts followed as the team leapt into action, diving toward where Portman had just been standing, catching his arms under the water. They slipped and pulled, swearing as they went. Portman reappeared spluttering and gasping. He shoved everyone away as he climbed to his feet, sopping and coated in filth.

"Shit." He growled shaking the grime from his soaked uniform.

"Portman. What the hell happened?" Sarge demanded angrily

"I fell in the damn hole." He replied cursing in disgust, still trying to brush himself off.

"Everybody on me, and watch your Goddamn footing." Sarge ordered aggravation lacing his voice "Now move."

Falling back in line the dejected crew moved on sloshing through the water. After several tense minutes passed Sarge came across something floating in the water. He picked it up. What used to be a white lab coat was now stained pink and red with blood, somewhat washed out by its time in the sewer.

"Looks like we've got a Dr. Willits. Steve Willits." Sarge said, peering at the name tag clipped to the breast pocket. Raising the lab coat completely out of the water they find that the garment is utterly shredded and destroyed. An ominous feeling fell over the contingent. Unwillingly, they moved on coming to a cistern and a meeting of multiple tunnels.

Sarge scanned the open chamber, assessing the number of routes.

Four, not counting where they'd just come from.

"Alright Kid and Reaper will take the far right, Fang the next one after that. Portman and I will take the one ahead, and Goat the far left." He turned to Destroyer. "You'll stay here and dig-in in case whatever we're chasing doubles back." The large man nodded hefting his intimidating chain gun, the belts of ammunition jangled softly. His size and weapon made him a poor scout, but he was the ideal choice to remain behind and hold the fort.

They broke into their respective teams and disappeared down their assigned tunnels.

The maze of tunnels was a nightmare to navigate. Several times they came across another team or scout, with them all on high alert; they risked literally jumping the gun and getting someone shot.

Reaper and Kid had just moved on after running into Goat at an intersection. They separated again taking the two tunnels neither group had come down. They took to marking the walls as they went, hoping the fluorescent ink wouldn't wash away in the damp.

Reaper and Kid creeped along the particularly wide tunnel, sticking close to the wall. The openness made the senior soldier even more nervous than the previously tighter confines. Kid sloshed behind him clumsily, frustrating him to no end. A pause in Kid's movements was filled by the sound of something dropping into the water. Reaper spun around gun up, throwing his hand up, shoving the younger man against the wall. The nineteen year old stared at him with wide puppy-like eyes. Several minutes went by as Reaper stared intensely into the shadows, slowly searching with his gun light. Finally he brushed the noise aside as nothing and loosened his grip on Kid.

"You lost your folks right?" Kid asked loudly as Reaper turned away from him. His voice was strangely thick with a country boy's accent.

"Quiet." Reaper hissed at him, but the jittery boy ignored him.

"Small world huh? See I lost my parents too." He started rambling loudly, his outspoken thoughts echoing through the chambers "Yeah just woke up one day and everything was gone, they wanted the TV more than they wanted me."

Reaper snapped, he swung around and shoved Kid up against the wall again.

"Every time you open your mouth, you give away our position." He growled threateningly.

Kid pinched his lips together, swallowed, and nodded. Reaper noticed something about his eyes. He fished in his pockets and found the red flashlight he kept with his med supplies. He shined the red tinted light in Kid's face, who twitched away from it. His pupils were massively dilated, making him look dewy-eyed and moonstruck. Reaper stared at him in disbelief of his stupidity.

"Are you high?" he asked incredulously.

Kid fumbled over his words as he denied the accusation. Again he spoke loud and dumbly.

"No, no actually you see I got this condition…" Reaper interrupted him, shoving him harder against the wall.

"I don't give a damn. You take one more shot of that shit and I'll blow holes in you. Got it."

Kid nodded vigorously, attempting to sober himself up. Reaper pulled him from the wall and shoved him roughly to the side, brushing past to continue down the tunnel. He'd barely taken his first step when something splashed loudly behind them. He twisted around gun up. Kid jumped and threw his hands up shielding himself. A shadow shifted.

"Get down."

"Hey look about the…" he stuttered, Reaper spotted a figure sloshing through the water over his shoulder.

"Get down!" He ordered. Kid ducked out of the way, but the figure was gone.

Reaper punched the button on his mic. Kid cowering at his feet.

"Goat, look out, there might be something comin' up behind you." There was a pause before Goat's response crackled through.

_"Copy that Reaper…"_

John contemplating continuing on down their own tunnel, but his gut feeling got the best of him. He grabbed Kid and pulled him up.

"Come on we're going back the other way."

Kid nodded and waited for him to pass before following.

Halfway back to the intersection where they had run into Goat before, the older soldier's panicked voice, fuzzed through the radio.

_"Shit this can't be happening… My light's out."_

Reaper quickened his pace; they couldn't afford to be blind in a situation like this.

"Don't move. I'm on my way."

He heard Goat ask Pinky nervously if he could see anything on the cam. The techy's reply was negative. Far from reassuring.

Reaper and Kid were running now, stealth abandoned. They passed the intersection and took the path marked orange for Goat.

"We're almost there." He assured.

Not two seconds later screaming erupted over the radio. Shots echoed down the tunnels.

"Goat!"

A guttural roar reverberated down the tunnels. Reaper raced down the passageway as fast as he could through the sludgy knee deep water. Goat's screams mingled with the snarls of some creature.

_Just around the next corner. The next Goddamn corner!_

The cries of pain were cut off sharply by a gurgling sound. Reaper finally reached the last corner and ducked around just in time to see the creature pinning Goat to the wall, drop him.

"Contact!" Reaper shouted into the radio, he fired at the… the monster in front of him. It roared, flashing long gruesome yellow fangs. A pair of almost human eyes surrounded by multitudes glossy pseudo-eyes, foggy bulges in the skull leered at them. Its oversized head, and boney emaciated waste cut a disturbing figure. Above all there was no skin only black, bloody, pulsing, mucus covered, muscle and sinew, and long spindly arms tipped with three long claws for fingers.

Reaper didn't have time to stare. After the initial burst the monster recovered and charged him. He fired again. Kid appeared beside him, took a position, and fired. The bullets pelted the creature's chest. It howled and backed away.

Reaper ducked past, dodging a wild swipe. He reached Goat's unconscious form. The creature fled down a side corridor.

"It's heading west through the tunnels." He said through the comm.

A burst of rifle fire echoed through the corridor, followed by a deafening silence.

_"…It's dead."_ Fang reported, her voice calm and featureless.

Reaper turned back to Goat. The weathered soldier was bleeding profusely from his neck. Reaper cursed, and pulled him from the water. Placing a hand against the flow of blood.

"Man down!" he shouted over the channels, Kid ran to help him "Man down!"

Fang appeared through the corridor, brackish water spattered up her front. She'd been running.

"Goddamnit! Repeat. Man down!"


	4. Chapter 4

Sarge and Reaper had Goat slung between them as they dragged him through the airlock. Bloody and sopping wet, the unit shoved through the crowd of scientists, shouting for them to evacuate as they went. The scientists panicked and stampeded for the ark doors.

The security detail appeared before Sarge.

"What's going on?"

"Just get everyone to the Goddamn ark and evacuate." Sarge snapped, the man backed away from the retort but nodded. He disappeared, shouting into the crowd. The crowd finally started to part for the detail of haggard soldiers, as they came through carrying a wounded man and dragging a body bag.

They stumbled into medbay. Sam gasped in shock when she saw Goat.

"What happen?" she asked Portman, breathless. Sarge and Reaper took Goat to the nearest gurney. Portman was helping Fang lift the body bag onto another.

"I don't know, he's mutterin' about devils." He replied

"Devils?"

"All his bible shit. Angels, good and evil, devils walking among us."

Sam turned back to Reaper who was pulling off Goat's Kevlar vest. Destroyer tore open Goats shirt, while Duke took his pulse.

"I've got a weak pulse." He reported

Reaper snatched up the electrodes and put them on Goat's chest. The heart monitor started to beat, slowly.

"I'm losing him." Duke warned.

Reaper called Kid over.

"Put pressure on the wound." He ordered pressing Kid's hand against the open hole in Goat's neck. Kid paled as the warm fluid squelched under his fingers.

"Sam get me a shot of adrenaline. Someone get an IV in."

Sam leapt for the drawer containing the spring loaded shots. She passed him one.

Sarge suddenly realized something was missing. He spotted an empty blood streaked gurney, and rounded on Sam.

"Where the hell's Carmack."

She jumped and stuttered "He disappeared."

"What do you mean disappeared!?"

The heart monitor shrieked as Goat flat-lined. Reaper cursed loudly. He shoved Kid to the other side of the gurney.

"We're defibbing."

He grabbed the paddles from their place under the heart monitor and placed them on Goat's chest, and waited for the charge.

"Clear." He barked. The current jumped from the paddle into Goat's chest. He jerked violently; the heart monitor chirped a beat at the heart spasmed then flat-lined again.

Despair painted across their faces.

Reaper cursed again. He tore open the package of the adrenaline injection and stabbed it into Goat's chest, injecting the compound. He repositioned the paddles and defibbed again.

A single beat.

"Come on you son of a bitch."

Flat-line. They'd tried once more.

Nothing.

Goat was gone.

Reaper pulled off the heart sensors and backed away from the gurney.

"DAMNIT!" he shouted in fury, smashing a cart full of surgical tools into the floors.

"Fuck." He paced across the room running his hands through his hair. The rest of team was silent.

Sam tried to go to Reaper, but Sarge caught her arm. She tried to pull away, but saw the fury in his face and thought better of it.

"Doctor, you are going to tell me just what the fuck is going on."

"What?" Sam mumbled terrified. His face contorted in rage. He dragged her over to the body bag.

"This is what." He roared tearing away the black covering revealing the twisted horrid creature beneath. Sam stumbled away.

"God!" she gasped in alarm.

"Do you have _anything_ like this on your archeological dig?" he demanded

She stared back at him and shook her head, bracing herself against a table.

"No." she breathed.

"Is there any way it could have come from the surface? From outside?" He asked drilling her for answers.

"The planet is completely dead." Sam insisted

"Well it had to have come from somewhere lady." Portman interjected. Sarge turned on him.

"Portman, shut up."

"The atmosphere can't support life." Sam continued, trying to explain.

"Well maybe it doesn't need air." Portman offered, ignoring Sarge. "After all it could be from another planet or something." The corporal's voice was growing even more jittery and nervous.

"What like an alien?" Sam countered

"Look at that thing!" Portman shouted spittle flying from his lips.

"Portman you need to shut the fuck up!" Sarge snapped, the hysteria rising.

Reaper finally stepped in.

"That's not what we saw. That's not what Goat and I shot at in genetics." He said quietly raising his head from his hands.

"So what there's more of these things?" Portman whimpered.

"Jesus." Fang breathed, pulling a glove off and rubbing a hand across her sweat-streaked face.

Sarge turned to Sam having calmed himself.

"Where are your surface entrances?"

"There's a pressure door at the end of the north corridor." She said

Sarge nodded and turned to Destroyer.

"Take Kid and Portman and get there now."

Destroyer nodded.

Sarge touched his mic

"Mac."

_"Sir?"_

"Arm Pinky with some ST grenades and get your ass down to the airlock. Seal the ark door. Whatever this is it can't get back through the ark."

_"Yes Sir."_

"There one more door."

Sarge turned back to Sam.

"Where?"

She opened her mouth to respond, but Reaper spook instead.

"The entrance to the archeological dig." He said gravely.

Sarge ordered Duke to remain with the Doctor in case Carmack showed up again.

They met up with Mac at the airlock, the base now empty of everyone else, but Pinky, and prepared to reenter.

"Alright men, we're going back in."

"We're not calling in back up?" Portman asked

Sarge hitched up the strap of his gun "The ark is sealed Portman. Nothing gets back through until everything on this planet is dead. We're going in hot."

"You can't be serious?" Portman exclaimed

"Shoulder your weapon." Reaper warned, the blond man ignored him.

"You saw how that thing greased Goat. It's SOP to call in reinforcements when the situation is-"

Sarge rounded on him. Drawing himself up to his full height, totally overpowering the scrawnier Portman.

"We are the reinforcements." He roared "Now shoulder your fucking weapon soldier."

Portman shrank away but complied.

Once inside they split into two teams. Destroyer, Kid, and Portman headed for the northern pressure door. Mac, Sarge, Reaper, and Fang headed for the entrance to the dig.

As the latter of the two teams worked their way towards the entrances to the dig site, Fang once more took the rear with Sarge and Reaper up front, Mac in middle. They reached the entrance to archeological sector and stopped.

"Pinky, we're entering the archeological dig." He reported then turned back to his team.

"Mac secure the exit, Reaper you and Fang check the entrance." He ordered

"What about you?" Reaper asked picking up on the Sarge's self exclusion.

"I'm heading to the weapon's sector." He smirked "We're gonna need something with a little more kick." With that they broke off. Sarge back tracking while Reaper and Fang went ahead leaving Mac to stand guard at the entrance.


	5. Chapter 5

Fang and Reaper entered with guns up clearing the room as they went. It was littered with tables covered in specimens, fossils, and rock samples. Papers scattered across the floor. Their lights fell across two bodies dressed in lab coats.

"Got a couple of body's." he reported

_"Can you ID them?"_ Sarge asked through the link, Reaper scrounged through the bodies for their name tags.

"We've got a Dr. Clay, and a Dr. Thurman."

Both men were horribly mutilated, the faces frozen in expressions of horror. The bodies were closer to the back of the room, closer to the actual surface exit. One doctor was even lying on his stomach arm outstretched as though reaching for the door His back was clawed apart. The spine severed.

Reaper shook his head "Sarge, these guys weren't trying to keep something from getting in. Something stopped them from getting out."

There was silence from the end.

_"Destroyer, report." _Sarge finally spoke

_"We've reached the north airlock, it's secure. Computer indicates nothings been in or out in twenty-six hours." _Destroyer sent back.

_"Alright,"_ Sarge began taking in the information _"Fang, Reaper secure the dig entrance and stand by. Destroyer, you and Portman start sweeping your area of the complex. Send Kid my way towards weapons developments. When I meet up with Kid, I'll signal Fang, Reaper, and Mac to start sweeping their sector. All seven of us should meet up a center of the complex, Genetics, where all this shit and monsters started. Alright everybody got the plan?"_

"Copy that." Reaper said, followed by a chorus of relatively similar responses.

He let out an exhausted sigh and leaned against a tabled while he fished out his canteen. He took a long swig of water to wet a beyond parched throat. He hadn't drunk anything since they'd arrived. He doubted anyone had. How long had they been here?

_Long enough to lose Goat_. He thought to himself. He slapped the cap back on to the canteen and stuffed it back into an oversized pocket. He turned to Fang.

"Stay here. I'll go check the surface exit." He turned and walked away not waiting for a reply. The walls being the outer most this side of the facility, had windows covered by heavy shutters. He punched a button, they opened with a creaking whine revealing the dusty pale sky, and the ochre landscape of the Martian desert. A massive dome towered over the entire Olduvian Complex. It's two foot thick Lexon glass laced with grids of lead, was the only protection between the scientists and the elements when outside in the dig.

Science could never figure out a cost effective way to replenish the atmosphere of an entire planet, but the area within the confines of the dome was easily regulated through several massive atmo-plants that pumped the mixture of Nitrogen and Oxygen directly into the air.

Despite these massive advancements in interplanetary colonization, Mars was still a belligerent planet. It had taken his family away from him for no other reason than that nature dictated it, and he hated it.

He felt himself come back to that day. He and Sam had practically been raised on Olduvai. Their nature hikes and family outings were of the Martian kind, full of shades of red and brown, rather than green or blue.

They had been on one that day, trekking up the path of a steep cliff near the dig. The humming of the laser drill vibrating through the earth beneath their feet as they dug ever deeper in search of ores and minerals, for use back on Earth forty-million miles away. He was sixteen then. Still a child at heart, he raced ahead of his family, Sam yelled after him to wait up then she ran forward too. Their parents had laughed at their antics. His mother was always smiling.

He took after her. The black hair, and brilliant blue eyes, infinite empathy. Sam always took after their father. The blond hair, the ravenous curiosity and the spunk. Ever snarky, sarcastic Sam. Even as fraternal twins they couldn't have been more different.

But that one day he ran ahead instead of Sam, the one time she would have chased after him, and the one day the drill would hit a major fault line that the contractor missed on the satellite map. The entire cliff side had crumbled. He could still remember the looks of utter terror on his parents' faces as the ground disappeared from beneath them. Sam's terrified scream when the ground wouldn't stop shaking. When it was over, he'd crawled to the edge, Sam crying hysterically behind him, and looked over at the broken bodies of Mary and Louis Grimm far below.

"Reaper?"

Fang's voice pulled him back to the present.

"I thought I told you to stay back there."

She just shrugged and leaned against the wall.

"You were back here a long time, and Mac has the exit-watch."

There was an almost imperceptible slur in her voice and the way she chose her words was odd, but she was right after all, Mac had the exit covered and they could be here a while.

"Never noticed you had an accent before. Where are you from?" he asked joining her by the wall. This was the first time he'd really listened to her voice.

"The North."

He frowned, that wasn't America north. "North where?"

"North."

Reaper took the curt reply in stride, and didn't press. Everyone has shitty places they don't want to talk about.

After a few moments of silence she spoke again.

"Your parents were killed in an accident here, yes?"

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"In loving memory of Louis and Mary Grimm," she recited "For their indispensible contribution to the study of our origins, as well as their warm, and caring hearts."

He stared at her.

"The plaque in the atrium is difficult to miss…"

He nodded, and felt himself drifting off again before he realized something else.

"How did you know it was an accident?"

"I read your file, and all of the others," she said simply "Bad habit. Don't tell Sarge I broke into his office."

"You could be court marshaled for that."

She barked a rueful laugh "I will be court marshaled when we go home, if we go home." She sighed softly. "Sarge should have shot me after I fucked up in Somalia. I'm sure some of the top brass are wanting for treason charges"

Reaper didn't think it would that far but…

"If we go home? Planning on dying?"

She stared off into the shadows, and several pregnant seconds passed before she spoke.

"… maybe."

The silence lingered this time. Fang staring off down the corridor one foot against the wall, gun hanging lazily by her side.

"Since you know mine so well, what's your story?" Reaper asked finally breaking the silence.

"Not much," she began "I don't know my father, my mother disappeared when I was five and my little sister a few years after that."

"What do you mean a few years?"

"She was eight I was nine. We lost each other during rush hour out on the streets after we snuck out of our foster home. I never found her after that, the police didn't find anything. I stayed in foster care through secondary school then left them for RRTS." She finished.

"No relatives?"

"Not anymore."

Reaper watched her for a while, really taking her in for once. The red hair in disarray, loose strands hanging in front of her ears and eyes. The wind-burned tan of her face and the dark circles under her eyes.

"How old are you?" it was a ghost of an afterthought that she might take offense to the question

"twenty-two."

He was taken aback by how young she was. He would have thought she was at least as old as him.

"You don't look twenty-two."

She stared at him for a long time. He immediately regretted the comment, that afterthought moving up in priority.

"How old are you?" she finally asked.

"Twenty-eight."

She squared up and brazenly looked him over. Brazen enough to making him uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck.

"You don't look twenty-eight."

He realized she was mocking him.

"…Alright you win."

The smirk just started to form when loud crash came from exit leading back into the complex. In a split second Fang and Reaper had their guns up and were stepping away from the wall where they could get a clear shot.

"Mac, what the hell was that noise?" Reaper whispered into the radio.

There was no response.

"Mac?"

Static.

They slipped quietly back to the room where they had found the scientists. Reaper slowly scanned room with his gun light.

"SH- Look out!"

Reaper didn't have to react to Fang's shout. She shoved him aside, but instead of tumbling into him, and smashing into the wall, she was wrenched away. He smashed into the pipes lining the steel wall, hitting his head hard. Stars burst across his vision and he fought to stay conscious though the room swam all around him.

He heard something slam against the opposite wall followed by a sharp gasp. He struggled to his feet

"Fang..."

Something immense loomed before him. There was a sickening crunch of splintering bones, and the squelching of blood. Fang howled in agony. The figure snarled and lunged, cutting off the scream with the sound of tearing flesh and a gurgling squeal.

Reaper shook the spots from his vision and raised his gun.

"Fuck…"

He wished he hadn't.

The scene was from hell. The monster before him was gargantuan, easily twice the size of the creature from the sewers. A mass of pulsing muscles, the bulbous head with tiny pinpricks for eyes, thick trunks for arms and legs. The creature had Fang pinned to the wall her legs dangling feet off the ground. Her face was deathly pale, eyes wide and staring. The creature extracted its head from where it gnawed on her throat, leaving behind a pulsating mass that after a few seconds fell away and wriggled pathetically on the floor.

The creature, now finished, became aware of Reaper. It turned and roared, then violently wrenched a long, broad length of piping from a bloodied hole in Fang's stomach, where it had formerly impaled her against the wall. She crumpled to the floor in a motionless heap.

The creature lunged; easily covering the short distance between them, swinging the pipe as it went. Reaper ducked the jagged piped lodged into the wall inches from where his head had just been. He dove to the side and rolled onto his back, firing from the ground at the beast towering over him.

"Contact!" he shouted into the radio.

Several of the bullets hit the mark, riddling the monster's chest with holes. It roared in agony and retreated from the spray of bullets. Eventually it turned and fled down the length of the room, smashing and knocking over tables as it went. Reaper stumbled over to Fang as the creature's heavy footsteps faded away down the hall.

Blood was pooling around her middle, the red-headed woman was curled up in a pitiful ball barely conscious and alarmingly silent.

He put his hand on her shoulder; she stirred slightly with a moan. He pulled her away from the wall and laid her out on her back. His heart sank when he saw the gaping hole in her abdomen. Her stomach and much of her small intestine was torn open or entirely obliterated. Her spine escaped unharmed, but several ribs were shattered when the piping exited at an angle out her back.

"Jesus." he breathed "Man down, Man down!"

No response over the radio.

"Damnit! Someone come in! Mac!"

Nothing, but static answered him. He barely stopped himself from smashing the useless device against the ground. He glanced at the bodies of the scientists, then pulling out a knife, dragged one man closer and cut away any clothing not stained in blood. Then he wadded up the fabric smothered it in antiseptic then stuffed it into the hole in Fang's stomach to stanch the flow of blood. She didn't react when he did so, worrying him. He propped her up and wrapped the gauze around her middle.

The blood seeped through immediately, along with a yellowish, pungent liquid.

Stomach acid.

Reaper inwardly swore. She should be screaming right now. The acid from her stomach would be worse than salting the wound. Hellish agony.

He turned to her neck and sighed in relief. Her jugular and major structures were intact, making the blood loss minimal, compared to her midsection at least. He patched it up quickly.

Leaving Fang for a few seconds he darted down the corridor toward the entrance, when he got there he found out why Mac had never responded. His decapitated corpse lay sprawled across the corridor, his head, yards further down the hallway. The creature must have killed him on its way in or else he would have responded to their call earlier. He was still at his original station.

Mac was lost to him, so Reaper didn't linger. He loped back down the hall to Fang. She was starting to stir again. He reached her quickly and she groaned.

"Reap…" she choked on her words, unable to speak through the blood pooling in her throat.

"Don't try to speak, I'm taking you out of here." She looked at him through glazed eyes. He helped her to sit up then stand.

She tried to push him away and stand on her own.

"I…" she started then choked and spasmed violently, she dropped to her knees arms around her stomach, retching a combination of bile and blood. The remains of her abdomen convulsed.

"Shit Fang don't move." Reaper snapped at her pulling her arm over his shoulder and helping her up again. She complied this time.

They started toward the door. Reaper tried his comm again.

This time it got through, Sarge's angry voice snapped over the ear piece.

_"Damnit Reaper where the fuck have you been?"_ he roared his voice resonating fury.

Reaper felt the rage and indignation rise in him. He barely kept the venom from his voice.

"Sarge we were attacked at the entrance to the dig, Mac was dead before we even knew what was coming, Fang's been injured… bad."

He heard Sarge curse through the radio. Finally he spoke again.

_"Destroyer's dead and Portman's MIA. Whatever the fuck attacked you came straight for him before any of us could intercept. Portman wasn't with him and he's not answering his comm."_

Reaper almost stopped dead in his tracks. Both Destroyer and Mac at once. How the hell was he even still alive if that thing had taken out both of them that quickly?

Sarge's voice came back over the ear piece.

_"Take Fang straight out to medbay. Kid and I will look for Portman."_

"Copy that."

Reaper glanced at Fang. He wasn't going to get any help pulling her out, so he needed to move fast if she had any chance.

He tried to readjust her weight so that the bulk of it was on him, she resisted again.

"Lean on me damnit." He growled, she stiffened then gave in. They continued, rounding another corner.

Fang choked again, they stopped until the convulsions passed. She panted and trembled, growing weaker.

"Sorry." She croaked, as they started forward again.

"… Don't worry about it."

She wanted to laugh by thought better of it.

"You don't… understand…." She breathed.

"I'm sorry for ev… everything."

"I'm sorry for you… for your sister. For this…." Her breathing rasped and gurgled with the effort.

"This whole fu… fucking place, and all th… the poor bastards in it. I'm gonna die and someone should say it to you, it may as well be me."

She was choking by the end of it, shaking uncontrollably.

"Shut the fuck up Fang. Like I said…"

"Don't worry about it."

She laughed wryly,

"Fuck Mars right?"

Reaper staggered into the infirmary, dragging the now unconscious Fang.

Duke jumped up from his chair, a look of shock covering his face.

"Shit." He mumbled.

"Jesus." Sam exclaimed as she rushed over to help, pulling Fang's other arm over her shoulder. The two siblings together lifted the comatose woman onto the now only available gurney. Reaper pulled off the ruined jacket, while Sam snatched up a pair of scissors and cut away the bandages around her midsection. She froze as the bandages fell away revealing the sopping blood soaked bundle of clothing.

Gently, Sam pulled out the wadded pieces of fabric and blanched.

"Oh God…"

The gore of the exenterated hole was enough to make her ill.

"John…" her voice was faint "This is… I'm not… I can't… God John. What happened?"

By chance she spotted the patch on Fang's neck. Horror and realization spread across her already paled face.

"John!" she called alarmed "John, she wasn't bit right? John?"

But Reaper wasn't listening.

He was staring at the mutated creature trapped within the nano-wall, imbedded in the seamless grey surface. The boney, horrid thing was hooked to an IV. It snarled at him.

"Sam, what the-"

At that moment Sarge and Kid burst through the door, dragging the limp form of Destroyer between them. Duke shot forward.

"Destroyer!" He shouted in a panic, racing to his friend.

"And Portman." Sarge said, accentuating the blond man's absence.

"What the fuck happened, man?" Duke demanded almost shoving his C.O. out of the way to get to Destroyer. "I got him. I got him!"

He pulled Destroyer away and eased him down beside the wall. The others stepped away to give the grieving man room.

Sarge neglected to answer Duke's question. He stepped away, staring at the medical ward, taking in the spatter of blood on the window to the temporary morgue and … the gurgling creature encased within the nano-wall.

Sarge's face swelled with fury, he rounded on Sam. "What the hell is this?" his voice rising in pitch "And who's goddamn blood is on that window?!"

Sam recoiled involuntarily from the on-slot. She bumped into Fang's gurney and caught herself on the edge. Taking a deep breath she spoke.

"Goat's." she answered calmly "He killed himself."

"What do you mean his killed himself? He was already dead." Sarge snapped. Behind him Kid flinched.

"It's true. It was Goat." Duke said, stepping in "He was changing into one of those motherfuckers and he killed himself." His voice cracked.

Sarge stared at Duke, unable to comprehend what the man had just said.

Tearing his eyes away from the creature in the wall, Reaper finally spoke.

"Fang and I found two more dead scientists at the dig. A Doctor Thurman and a balding guy with glasses." He said unable to place the name of the latter.

"Doctor Clay." Sam offered, she brushed past Sarge to reach Duke and Destroyer. Carefully she checked Destroyer's neck, finding nothing she moved back to Fang, and started to remove the patch from her neck.

"Did you check their necks?" she asked urgently "Were there any open wounds on their necks."

Reaper gave her a trying look.

"We were conducting a firefight not an autopsy."

She turned on him angrily.

"John…" she said trying to compose herself "How did Fang get the wound on her neck?"

Before Reaper could answer Sarge interrupted, determined to get the conversation back on track.

"We came up to find six scientists." He began, "Four are confirmed dead, and Dr. Willits is probably KIA somewhere in the sewers." He turned to Sam, his full height intimidating her.

"That leaves just Doctor Carmack." He growled "Has Doctor Carmack shown up yet?"

"Oh he's showed up alright." Duke muttered behind him.

Sam pointed to the creature in the nano-wall.

"Look at the left ear."

Sarge gave her a strange look, but turned anyway, approaching the creature. Sam took the advantage to turn back to the unconscious woman on the table.

She gasped when she did. In minutes Fang's body had dramatically changed, becoming emaciated, her cheeks hollowed, and her collar bones jutted out from her chest, straining against the skin.

Sam glanced at the bloody patch in her hand.

The thinned blood dripped from the soft pad, black clumps of coagulating dead cells spotted the absorbent cotton.

She couldn't stop herself from trembling in fear, the nausea rising in the pit of her stomach.

Fang stirred.

While Sam cowered in her discovery, Sarge found the ragged hole in the side of the pathetic beast's head, oozing blood, where the ear should have. The horror of realization welled up inside of him.

"Son of a bitch…"

Sarge turned slowly, finding Sam fumbling with the restraints on the gurney, strapping down Fang's arms and legs. Flooded with the implications of the mutated Doctor trapped in the nano-wall, he didn't comprehend her strange behavior.

"What the hell were you people working on up here?"

Sam's head snapped up sensing the dangerous tone of Sarge's voice. He advanced on her.

Sam stuttered,

"We-we're not doing anything..."

Sarge interrupted her.

"Then what the _fuck_ is that!" He roared throwing a hand out toward the beast that was Carmack behind him.

She stumbled away nervously.

Reaper tensed, watching Sarge carefully. When the enraged man took another advancing step, Reaper moved between him and his twin sister.

The glare Sarge gave him was murderous.

"I've lost four soldiers, and now I have one dying on a table with a fucking hole in her gut." He said dangerously, but before he could turn on the doctor once more he was stopped by the horrifying, agonized, scream that shredded through the air around them.

* * *

Fang strained against the padded straps of the gurney, her back arching as her cries of agony echoed off the steel walls. The heels of her boots scuffed and tore up the coverings underneath her. She twisted and struggled against her bonds.

"What the fuck?" someone muttered, Duke finally moved away from Destroyer's side.

Reaper made to help his tortured team member.

"NO! Don't go near her." Sam cried from Fang's opposite side. "She's mutating. We-"

She was interrupted by another blood curdling scream. Sam swallowed thickly "We can't do anything."

Fang howled in pain while her comrades could do nothing, but standby uselessly and watch. There was a sickening sound of snapping bones.

"Jesus Christ…" Duke said turning away. Kid looked sick.

Fang writhed on the gurney. Her fingernails tearing apart the thin layer of vinyl and stuffing under her hands, rubbing the skin from her wrist as she tried desperately to free herself. The muscles throughout her body swelled as the division of her cells increased a hundred fold. Her skin strained and turned an angry red. Suddenly nodules and plates of bone ripped through her flesh along her arms and back in a spray of blood. She screamed.

Several of the marines cursed in surprise.

"Fuck… Sam get over here now." Reaper ordered. She jumped at the sound of his voice, but nodded. She hurried over, edging around the gurney now dripping with blood.

If was difficult to recognize the marine now. Her clothes and skin split apart revealing only pulsating red muscle. Her ribs burst from her chest in another fountain of blood. Seconds later her chest broadened and expanded up into her extended rib cage. Her jaw elongated into a bloodied red snout, the skin tearing away from her face. The restraints around her wrists and ankles finally snapped in a final burst of growth turning her hands and into gruesome claws. The gurney groaned under the tremendous weight of the monstrosity bearing down on it. The aluminum framed crumbled. Dropping Fang's mutilated body to the floor.

She had become a four-legged hellish beast. A massive toothed hound with crinkled, snarling snout, her spine protruded from her back and extending into a bony tail, she dripped with blood, pulsing from her torn and exposed veins.

All that remained of her once human self were her dog tags, the chain pulled far too tight and embedded in the flesh of her neck, leaving only the one silver tag stretched taunt again her thick, muscular throat, the other tag buried amongst the tattered remains of her clothing, strung in the laces of her boots. Her head rose, all too human eyes staring back at them.

In the last seconds of her humanity, Alexandria Wolfe turned to stare at the group of men and the single woman.

Her mind clouded by hunger and blood, she couldn't recall their faces, not even their names.

But amongst the expressions of horror, one man, with welsh black hair and brilliant blue eyes, looked sad. He raised the gun at his side and aimed down the barrel.

Her world went black with the flash of the muzzle.

Reaper lowered his rifle slowly, for all its nightmarish horror and grandiose expectations; it took a single bullet right between the eyes to bring the demon down.

Demon.

It wasn't Alex anymore.

He lowered his gun feeling drained and sad. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, but just as he let his guard down there was a scream. Something massive plowed into him.

It smashed him against a shelf of supplies toppling it with the clatter of smashing equipment. Reaper hit the ground hard, grappling with the creature that used to be Fang. It landed on top of him, snapping at him trying maddly to reach his throat, but he shoved his hand against its neck, stopping the double set of two-inch fangs short. It snarled and lunged at him again. Its maw, dripping with saliva, came inches from his face. Frustrated, the demon raked its claws across his vest destroying the Kevlar plates.

He heard shouts and the sounds of gunfire, but nothing phased the determined beast. He managed to get his feet under it and in a surge of adrenaline, flipped the enormous hound over his head, sending it slipping and sprawling across the floor.

Reaper scrambled to his feet reaching for his pistol, but the beast had already moved on to another target. And that target was Kid.

The nineteen year old had nowhere near the reaction time as the older Staff Sergeant. The demon turned on him, and he didn't stand a chance. It bowled him over and tore out his throat before he could even scream.

"Fuck!" Sarge shouted. He was emptying a clip at the thing. When the bullets hit, it snarled and dove away, lurking behind the counters. Though taller than any of the surfaces in the room at the shoulder, they provided sufficient cover for the beast. Only its short sail of pointed vertebrate betraying it.

The men and the mutant were playing a game of high stakes cat and mouse, but it was Sam who came up short. She screamed as it raced past the counter straight for her.

"SAM!" Reaper shouted, his legs felt as if they were cemented to the spot. He couldn't move, paralyzed where he stood, and just before the fangs and claws of the former Corporal Alexandria Wolfe, ripped into the defenseless flesh of his twin sister, Reaper felt himself being sucked into the black.

Falling away from everything he thought was reality.


	6. Chapter 6

_"John?... John Grimm?"_

Reaper awoke with a start, bolting up only to find himself strapped down. His chest constricted with fear. He couldn't breathe, the harsh lights blinded him. He struggled against his bonds, disorientated and trapped. Metal shrieked in protest, something snapped.

A woman squealed with fright.

"John… Mr. Grimm, please calm down."

The small voice broke through his terror induced frenzy. He blinked away the spots in his vision. The room came into focus, the fluorescent lights above his head stopped spinning. He was lying on something cold, something hard.

Lifting his head, he found that he was bolted down to a steel table. Thick metal clamps on his wrists, legs, and chest. The chest bar seemed lose, he craned his neck to the side. One of the bolts on his right had been snapped in half.

_I did that…?_

"Mr. Grimm?"

He turned his head toward the voice.

A small mousy woman with glasses was peering at him over a clipboard. She bobbed up and down on her toes, straining to see him as though there was some barrier at her feet she couldn't cross. She wore a clean pressed lab coat and a pair of hospital scrubs.

Glancing back at himself he realized he wore something identical, minus the lab coat.

"Where am I?" He asked "Where's…" suddenly everything rushed back to him.

"Sam!" he tried to bolt up again, tried to wrench his arms from the clamps. The bond across his chest gave way to the impossible display of strength. The other bolt snapped, ricocheting across the room. The steel strap flung open on its hinge and clattered loudly against the table.

The woman let out a terrified squeak, turning to flee she bumped into the person standing behind her. Back pedaling, the mousy woman stammered an apology as she looked into the face of her boss who merely smiled, and, ignoring the apology, spoke.

"Thank you Ms. Maus, your services are no longer required, show the guard your ID and he will show you out. Oh and may I take the clipboard from you?"

The small woman nodded vigorously, handing over the clipboard, then wasted no time in scurrying for the pressurized door, the only way in or out of the relatively featureless room.

The door opened with a hiss and slammed shut behind her.

Reaper continued to struggle with the clamps on his wrist desperately trying to get free.

The steel groaned ominously. He needed to find Sam and make sure she was ok. The sound of heels clicking on linoleum distracted him. Followed by a woman's voice.

"Staff Sergeant Jonathan Grimm aka Reaper. RRTS Special Ops Unit 6. Correct?"

Frustrated, he stopped struggling against the restraints, to look at the woman. Anger and fear for his sister played across his striking features.

"Obviously." He snapped. The woman drew closer. She cut a clean, professional figure in a knee length grey pencil skirt, and white silk blouse. Long blond curls spilled over her shoulders and framed a face half obscured by the clipboard. Perched on her nose was a pair of sleek black framed reading glasses. She studied the papers on the clipboard and clucked at his impatience.

"It never hurts to hear from the patient Staff Sergeant Grimm." She drawled.

Her voice seemed disturbingly familiar.

The woman hummed to herself while she finished the document on the clipboard. Reaper felt the anger in him swell over the total disregard of himself and his sister. He wanted to shout at this woman to release him or at least tell him what the hell was going on.

Finally, the she made a sound of approval, nodding to herself. She tucked the clipboard under her arm and took off her glasses, tucking them into the plunging collar of her blouse.

He stared at her in shock.

"Staff Sergeant Grimm, I am Lieutenant Coronel Naomi Wolfe, and I will be your handler as long as you are a part of our program."

But he failed to hear her.

Reaper was staring into the face of someone whom he knew as Corporal Alexandria "The Fang" Wolfe.

"Who are you?" Reaper demanded unable to get past the woman's shocking resemblance to his former team member, the woman who, as he remembered, had just been trying to kill him while in the form of a hellish, mutated, wolfhound.

The woman frowned, marring her flawless youthful features.

"We've just covered that Staff Sergeant; I would appreciate it if you paid attention." She snapped

"Lieutenant Coronel Naomi Wolfe." She repeated, irritably reintroducing herself "Your new boss."

Reaper shook his head he didn't have time for military bullshit "Where am I? Where is the rest of my team?" he demanded "What the hell is going on, we were just at the base in Olduvai on a recovery mission-"

She interrupted him.

"I'm well aware of your last mission Grimm." She said obviously displeased with his crassness, beside the table he was strapped to was a straight backed aluminum chair. She pulled it away and positioned it within his comfortable line of sight and sat down, crossing her legs and smoothing her skirt. Pointedly taking her time to get situated.

"You are here to be debriefed on the exact events that occurred at Olduvai, particularly those concerning your contact with chromosome 24, contact that has resulted in your current physical condition."

"What current physical condition?" He was growing more frustrated by the minute, why was he strapped down like this? Why wasn't this woman answering his questions? He pulled at the restraints again and the metal squealed. He could feel them loosening around his wrists.

Her voice interrupted his thoughts once more.

"Grimm, what exactly is the last thing you remember before waking up?"

He exhaled slowly trying to compose himself before responding "We were in the infirmary at Olduvai, Corporal Dean Portman and Sergeant Roark Gannon had been killed in action, Corporal Alex Wolfe had been seriously injured and infected by the creatures we encountered in the quarantined section of the facility. She mutated and attacked us, in doing so she killed Private Mark Dantalian. Wolfe was on the verge of attacking my sister, Doctor Samantha Grimm, stationed on Olduvai when I blacked out and woke up here." He finished calmly.

She nodded to herself and glanced back at the clipboard, absorbing herself in its contents.

Her lack of interest infuriated him.

"What the hell is going on?" he snapped in frustration.

She stopped staring at the clipboard and looked at him. Her eyes were cold and hard as granite. He closed his eyes and fought to compose himself once more.

"What do you mean by physical condition, Lieutenant Coronel?" He tried again coolly, putting emphasis on her rank. She nodded seemingly appeased by his more civil tone. After another disinterested scan of the documents and a light tapping of the attached pen, she spoke.

"Those restraints, this table, and those bolts are all made of the military's strongest steel alloy." She drawled "and yet not only have you deformed them, but you've snapped several of the bolts in half. Tell me Staff Sergeant, How is it you can do that?"

"… Sam, she injected me with chromosome 24 I…" he trailed off as memories flooded into his brain. He remembered everything.

He remembered Sam's discovery that not everyone could become infected, that the creatures chose their victims. He remembered Sarge's slow spiral into insanity, as he chose to murder civilians indiscriminately, and when he shot Kid for refusing to do so.

He remembered the undead chasing them through the UAC facility, lead by the monstrous Stahl. The first victim of the experimental mutations.

He remembered Duke dying as he was wrenched through the metal bars of a floor, how Sarge was dragged through the malfunctioning nano-wall. The ricochet that would have killed him as he bled to death, only for Sam to save him on the off chance that he would be one of the few incapable of being infected. How by faith and luck she had been right. His super human body sweeping through the halls like a force of nature. Annihilating the mutants as he searched for his twin sister, to find her in the clutches of the entirely mad Sarge as he slowly turned into one of the beasts he was meant to kill.

But if Kid was killed by Sarge then he wasn't killed by Fang, how did he know who Stahl was if Fang was attacking them when Sam would have been showing them the video record of Carmack's research. Fang wasn't with him at the entrance to the dig, Sarge was. Nothing happened in Somalia. RRTS hadn't been there in years. Fang didn't kill the creature in the sewers, he did. Only he and Sam had been in the archeology sector where he'd seen Lucy. Portman didn't pass up a woman no matter how scary. And how could he remember a conversation between Fang and Sarge back in the base if he hadn't even been in the room?

Who the hell was Alexandria Wolfe?

He voiced his final realization allowed.

Lieutenant Coronel Wolfe smiled.

"Exactly."

"Grimm when you exited the UAC Earth-side Ark Facility you fell into a self-induced coma very soon after you were picked up by the RRTS reinforcements acting on the distress signal sent by Corporal Dean Portman." She recited the information blandly, examining her manicured fingernails, and showing very little interest in having to go over these mundane things.

"You're coma has lasted for about two weeks, as you can see there is no IV or any other form of life support as you don't need it. Your body facilitates for its own needs. How? We don't know at this point. It's likely your body was finalizing its adaptation to C24, which we've found acts almost like a virus, by inserting its DNA directly into the nuclei of your cells. All of your cells."

She rattled off account after account leaving no room for questions.

"However, in order to further our research we needed to wake you up. Conventional methods failed so we turned to a type of hypnosis." She finally looked up, her blue eyes boring into him.

"_That_ is why you remember a soldier by the name Alexandria Wolfe. She is a persona that was inserted into your psyche to wreak havoc with your memories."

She paused to let it sink in.

"I was supposed to wake up when I realized everything didn't add up." He said, she nodded.

"Precisely, but the changes had to start subtle then increase each time she appeared in your memories, and the personality we created had to be similar to your own, or else you would pick up on it immediately, write it off as a dream, and remain comatose. So we created a young woman relatively similar to you in personality: brooding, tragic, dark, orphaned, socially conflicted. A career soldier who gave up one life for another. Someone who looks and acts older than they really are, self-sacrificing, we covered everything, even down to your rather unimaginative call-signs."

"Why does she look like you?"

The Lieutenant Coronel gave him a trying look.

"We need a basis for her appearance so naturally they used me; or rather they used my appearance combined with my sister's name, and then an image close to how my sister would have looked had she lived today. No, you do not need to know anything else about her beyond that. Using her name and some of her features, such as her hair and eye color was a precaution in case my name and face had somehow circulated through your division allowing you to possibly recognize me."

She finished crisply and waited for his reaction.

Reaper was silent for a very long time. Her explanation barely made sense, but he couldn't shake how real it had felt. Probably because most of it had actually happened, but he couldn't get away from the image of Fang mutating into that creature. He'd been covered in her blood, he could remember the hot, sticky liquid leaking through the bandages and staining his hands as he'd dragged her through the dark corridors, dreading every turn in case that creature had returned to finish them off.

Above all this woman who claimed the Fang he knew was literally a figment of his imagination, felt…

Wrong…

It was almost as if he could smell the injury in her mind, that frailty, the disregard for human life. The flaw. Here he was, a mutant super soldier strapped to a table. Her new lab rat…

… and she was bored.

Then he realized.

She smelled like Sarge. Smelled like madness, she smelled like the hunger that had radiated from Sarge while he turned into one of those monsters.

This woman was a monster, and he was her next toy.

Finally fed up with his silence, Lieutenant Coronel Wolfe stood, smoothing her skirt impatiently.

"If you have any more questions Grimm, I suggest you ask them now."

"Where's my sister?"

The woman sighed arduously

"Doctor Samantha Grimm, was taken to the hospital at Nellis Air Force Base to be treated for her injuries then airlifted to the Las Vegas General Hospital. After a few days she was released, and it is my understanding she is currently still in Las Vegas at the UAC research facility awaiting a transfer to Salt Lake City." She then added irritably "She's been very persistent in demanding the military give her information as to your whereabouts of which she has been denied."

John exhaled slowly the tension leaving his body as he finally relaxed. Even if none of this made sense to him, even if his entire life had been turned on its head. At least Sam was safe.

The sound of the pressure door opening drew his attention, a wiry woman in yet another lab coat slipped through. The Lieutenant Coronel glanced at the delicate watch adorning her wrist.

"It appears my time is up, but before I forget, you and the men on your team were rewarded for your bravery. All of you, posthumously or otherwise, have been promoted two ranks. Congratulations Master Sergeant Grimm. Now I'm afraid we'll have to put you under again." She motioned to the man behind her.

"You're not releasing me?" he asked, an ominous feeling rising in his chest.

"I'm afraid you're far too valuable and far too dangerous for us to allow you to run lose. You won't be leaving this facility for some time." She took a syringe from the small woman.

"You're just going to keep me here, locked up." He demanded angrily.

"Grimm, you are a science experiment, and very possibly the first of a new generation. I would be honored to be in your position."

"Honored!" he snarled, "then why don't you strap yourself to a table and join me?!"

"Because I'm more important the way I am." She stabbed the syringe into his neck and injected the anesthetic. "Goodnight John."

The drowsiness washed over him, and for several seconds he fought to stay awake, but his brain just shut down.

As though someone had simply flipped a switch.

Naomi Wolfe was fascinated that the anesthetic didn't react immediately. The delay was substantial. Several seconds in fact, amazing even for just a local range drug, however this particular anesthetic was meant for large mammals. It should have killed him.

At the moment she had a strong suspicion that it wouldn't last long.

"Dr. Cooper, please put the subject on a drip to keep him under, but make sure it's not too heavy, I want him alert within an hour's notice anytime I require. Also, get someone to replace the table restraints. See if we can't reinforce them as well."

The wiry woman nodded, and exited the room.

She lingered a few moments more, pondering the events of the next few weeks. The UAC facility at Area 51 had been reopened, and sufficient samples recovered. However, to continue, Dr. Carmack's research would have to be recovered, and since the other Grimm sibling had found it ever so convenient to lose the disks containing whatever data she'd recovered, that meant she would have to reopen the Olduvai facility.

That meant sending in a long term repair team to fix the Ark control console knocked out by Grimm's idiotic act of heroism. Which would mean expending another unit to protect them in case RRTS had failed to eliminate all of the possibly infected from the complex.

Her face crinkled in disgust. Enlisted men never thought beyond their next adrenaline high. They were sloppy and uncoordinated, and only ever succeeded in giving her headaches.

With a huff she spun on her heal and exited the room leaving the sleeping man behind her.

Exiting required a full sterilization. Her clothes were stripped and incinerated, including any jewelry. Then she was hosed down with a scalding mixture of water and anti-bacterial solution until her skin was raw.

When finished, she was presented with a towel and clean clothes.

The precautions were truly unnecessary in her opinion. C24 may act as a virus inside the body, but it wasn't a true virus. It wasn't as if the chromosome were an air-born pathogen or microbe.

As to how the creatures described by Dr. Grimm in her interrogation were capable of spreading the chromosome like a virus?

That was currently under investigation; in fact, it was something she was planning on checking immediately.

Having changed, Naomi made her way through the fluorescently lit halls of the complex. She'd been given a skirted uniform that sported her stripes, resulting in several salutes throughout the halls. Of which she was expected to recognize. The constant nodding and murmurs of "at ease" were growing tiresome. She cursed the pathetic bigot who had thought to give her a uniform. From now one she would bring her own change of clothing. At least then only those who knew her would feel the need to salute.

Naomi Wolfe was one of a group of people that saw rank as only a means to further their own goals. She harbored no interest in the frivolity of ceremony or tradition.

Deep within the complex, and several floors beneath it, the Lieutenant Coronel reached her destination.

The military's true house of horrors.

Here several pale and scrawny scientists, with their own contingent of guards, carried out the research others refused. She stepped off the elevator into a harshly lit hallway. Windows opened into several of the rooms. She approached one and looked in. A doctor and his research assistant were currently tearing into the chest cavity of one of the mutated creatures from the UAC facility.

She tapped on the glass. The surgeon looked up.

"Dr. Quinley, where might I find Dr. Murdock?"

The surgeon gestured to his left, her right.

"Down the hall in Containment. Just past the morgue. He and the others are examining the live ones."

She smiled.

"Thank you Quinley, carry on."

She turned down the hall and continued. Passing a door marked 'Morgue'. She came to two thick pressure doors at the end of the hallway, a key pad and card reader beside them. She pulled an ID card attach to chain from the collar of her uniform and swiped the card then typed in her code. The red light beeped green and the seal on the doors released with a hiss.

She entered the more open space, one side of the room lined with cages, heavily reinforced cells. The other side was crammed with desks, computers, and small, walled control room sporting a full surveillance setup.

The bottoms of the cages were false and could be opened to drop their occupants into a narrow shaft that sloped downward. The walls could be systematically electrified, forcing the captive down the crawl space to the wide, fifteen foot deep electrified holding cell in the center of the room.

As she was aware, Dr. Carmack had a similar set up in his own lab on Olduvai, but unlike his, the top of the holding cell wasn't left open. It was covered by steel grating that like everything else was electrified. The scientists could observe the holding cell from a pair of low criss-crossing catwalks above it or from the control room as the cell was thoroughly bugged with cameras and microphones.

For safety precautions, the only exit in or out of Containment was the pressure door, which only opened by special clearance. The air-vents providing air to the room were also electrified, and only opened when sensors scattered throughout the room indicated low oxygen levels.

For the safety of the occupants, the control room doubled as a panic room, and in the result of an emergency, the scientists could lock themselves in that room for days with adequate supplies. Also, if necessary, they could enact the emergency protocol, which would flood the outer chamber and holding cells with poisonous gases.

When Wolfe entered she found two scientists observing a creature pacing angrily in the holding cell and snarling up at them standing on the catwalk. Several of its counterparts cowered in their separate cages crouching in their own filth and occasionally letting out long keening howls. By the desks and computers she found Dr. Murdock dissecting the tongue of one of the Olduvian abominations.

He looked up as she approached.

Maxwell Murdock was just a pale as his other colleagues. He sported a mane of pale blond hair, of which he kept in a neat comb over. He had a beak of a nose and unforgiving black eyes, which many found, unnerving when lingered upon. However, unlike many of his fellow researchers, Murdock was fiercely devoted to his appearance and always maintained a crisp façade with neatly ironed oxford shirts and clean pressed slacks, and this time was no different.

He smiled as she approached, but little warmth reached his eyes.

"Ah Lieutenant Coronel, what brings you down to our little hell hole?" he asked

"I'm here, Dr. Murdock, to learn whatever information you've attained concerning C24 from your research, particularly on its vector."

He nodded his understanding "What we've found Ms. Wolfe, is that C24 can only cause mutation by direct injection into the individual." He gestured to the tongue "The creatures we captured inside the UAC base, had developed tongues evolved for injecting a C24 based solution into their victims. As to how they dictated between their victims we still don't know yet."

"What about our other… subject… is it possible for him to unwittingly infect another person?" she asked and Murdock shook his head.

"I would assume no, but we don't know what would happen if he were to say have sexual intercourse with a woman who had the genetic markers described by Dr. Grimm that turned these… people… into the monsters they are now." He gestured to the mutants in their cages.

"Would C24 spread from him through her cells and mutate her? Or would it remain within her egg and develop into a child and what would that child be?" He smiled at the thought, the challenge exciting him "There are still many avenues to explore."

He was standing on the edge of a cliff. The iron and rust stained landscaped stretching before him. The heat was unbearable and the wind scorched his skin as it howled across the barren desert.

"Reaper." He turned when the voice called his name

They stood there, dressed in black and Kevlar, silver tag at their throats glittering in the sunlight, waiting for him. The wind whipping against their clothes. They held their guns to their chest.

Duke, Destroyer, the Kid, Portman, Goat, Mac, Sarge.

Fang.

She stood at the front, shimmering like a mirage in the harsh red sunlight. The wind tugged at her hair, loosening the strands around her face, the red hue blending perfectly with the burnt world.

"We're dead." She said, her voice small and childish. She sounded wrong.

"Fang?"

Her eyes dropped to her feet.

"We're dead." She was silent for a long time. None of the others moved. They just stared through him, gazing out over the cliffs.

Suddenly her head jerked up violently. A crooked smile split her face and she laughed.

"We're ALL dead!" as her laughter died away, she looked at him, a cruelty filling her eyes as they bored into him.

"And it's your fault."

Then her face contorted into that horrid snout edged with rows of yellowing fangs. She swelled and turned crimson, twisted into the demon and lunged for his throat.

He stumbled backward, throwing his arms up in defense. She plowed into him and they both toppled over the cliff.

_None of this is real! _His thoughts screamed as he fell.

_WAKE UP!_

Drip.

He was running through the dim corridors of the UAC base at Area 51.

One of the mutants appeared. Lightning quick he brought his gun up and fired.

One shot to the head. He didn't miss a beat.

Another, this one almost human. Another head shot. Dead.

The inhuman speed, the power flooding through him, burning through his veins like the Martian heat.

"Sam."

He searched wildly. A scream.

"Sam!"

He entered the main lobby. The power was out, only the backup generators and the lights from the consoles illuminated the scene before him.

Sarge, grinning and half turned, held Sam out in front of him, an arm locked around her neck. She whimpered and fought to free herself.

"Semper fi motherfucker." Sarge sneered and with a violent twist, snapped her neck.

"SAM!"

Drip.

He was standing in the barracks. Duke was playing a video game. Destroyer and Mac obliterated fruit with a pitch and a swing.

"Reaper." He turned, Fang strode toward him. She brought her arm up holding a pistol.

"Sarge went to hell. What about you?"

BANG!

Drip.

_Ring around the rosie_

His mother sat in a field of grass humming quietly to herself. His father stood beside her, gazing out over the earthly plains.

_Pocket full of posies_

She weaved a halo from a collection of wild flowers, strewn across her lap.

_Ashes to Ashes_

The field burst into flames, his father disappeared into the smoke and fire. His figure collapsed into a pile of cinders.

_We all fall down!_

The Earth crumbled away beneath his mother and she fell in the flurry of sparks and dust that consumed her.

Drip.

The hallway was dark, something snarled behind him.

_NO!_ He shouted _Wake up! DAMN IT Wake up you fucking bastard!_

Drip.

"Lieutenant Coronel?"

"What?" she snapped irritably from behind her desk. The young private recoiled.

"Dr. Cooper asked me to come get you Ma'am." He said after moment, trying to straighten himself up again "She says that the subject's condition is getting worse."

Naomi sighed and rubbed her temples.

"Fine."

She got up and followed the young man back to the observation deck.

The dark room consisted of several high definition display screens in the corner, hooked up to cameras inside the observation chamber. On the same wall was a reinforced, glass two-way mirror.

Through the mirror Naomi observed her pet project thrashing violently against his restraints. Three steel alloy bars across the chest. One on each arm, wrist, thigh, and ankle. Yet still they groaned and warped as he writhed beneath them.

"We'll have to replace those straps again." Cooper mumbled beside her. She pushed her wire rimmed glasses back up her thin pointed nose.

"He's still having nightmares." She said. Cooper nodded.

"A week since he was revived and still it's the same routine. Put him under, this happens, we wake him up, he tries to escape, and we put him under again. His nightmares are beyond the symptoms of normal PTSD _and_ he can't wake up from them. It's a side-effect of the hypnosis."

Naomi's face darkened "We're not going to get anywhere like this. The anesthetic shouldn't even allow him to dream, and yet we get this." She gestured to the cell as another cry ripped through the intercom system.

"We could always give him more… breathing room."

The glare she directed at her should have frosted her glasses. She swallowed.

"Or not…"

After a few more moments and the popping of yet another arm restraint, she gave in with a sigh.

"Fine, transfer him to the Solider cell then wake him up."

Cooper hesitated,

"You might need a little more than that... uh Ma'am."

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly.

"Where is she?"

"Still in Salt Lake City, we can have her here in an hour."

"Then I wanted her here an hour ago. Go."

Cooper nodded and ducked out of the room, shouting to her personnel as she did so. Several nurses darted into the pressurized room, gathering around Grimm. After a few minutes and an uneasy transfer from the anesthetic drip to the oxygen mask, they had him subdued, and with an armed contingent, wheeled him out of the room.

**AN: And there's the twist. I'll keep posting a few more chapters, let me know what you think.**


	7. Chapter 7

The coalition of scientists and armed guards pushed their way through the narrow halls, a gurney in their midst. The Nellis Base personnel flattened themselves against walls or ducked into doorways to avoid the determined group.

A young Corporal with dark brown nearly black hair and tanned skin cutting a lean figure watched lounging against a door frame, as the troupe passed. His identical younger sister ducked her head out into the hall beside him.

"You think that was him Jared?" she asked straining on her toes to see over the heads of the retreating men.

"Don't play dumb Louise." The older sibling snipped lightly "You saw the cuffs on that guy. And the supped-up horde of mall-cops is a dead giveaway."

'Louise' gave her brother a sly look, the mischievous twinkle, sparkling brightly in her eyes. After a moment she shrugged lightly and fell back rocking on her heals.

"Yeah your right." She sighed dramatically "s'ppose I shoulda paid more attention." She turned to enter the room attached to the door stoop, the crew lounge, while her brother rolled his eyes. She often played sweet and stupid to mess with the male soldiers and belie her intelligence.

Much to his annoyance she occasionally 'forgot' to drop the act around him.

He turned to follow her, now that the excitement was over.

Corporals Jared and Louise 'Sonny and Cher' Hasar were, like their long departed Hollywood counterparts, the dynamic duo of the Military. Though siblings and not husband and wife like the original Sonny and Cher, Jared and Louise were renowned for their fluid ability to adapt and work together flawlessly in any situation. Of course they were not without their own trials.

Jared and Louise came from a family with middle-eastern roots. After an era filled with xenophobia and hate for all things Muslim, and by blanket judgement, all things middle-eastern. Their family had lost touch with their heritage and fallen victim to the inexorable demand to conform, perpetuated the "free" American media. After two or three generations of lost tradition, their family was seeking to reconnect with their heritage, and now too were Jared and Louise. This actually proved to make their bond even stronger. Often, strings were pulled to ensure the pair always ended up in the same units. There incredible teamwork and loyalty made them invaluable members to the top secret sectors of Nellis Air Force Base, better known as Area 51.

The two strode into the rec room complete with a pair of lumpy, formless sofas, a flat screen, game station, and various assortments of board games. As of now, groups of off duty marines were engrossed in the TV, clearly focused on the prerecorded football game.

Seconds later they exploded in a combination of groans and cheers. Louise suppressed a laugh. She reached small table near the kitchen area, which consisted of a counter, cupboard, refrigerator, and microwave, and made herself comfortable reclining against it.

"So, Jared. What do you think? That was a crap lotta steel they had on him." She said as her brother settled himself next to her, arms crossed against his chest.

He thought for a moment before responding.

"I think the rumors might be true." He said

She looked skeptical.

"Well I think it's all a bunch of bull." She declared "I mean he didn't look like some super human mutant or whatever. He can't be any taller or bigger than you."

"What did you expect? One of the Imps down in Containment?" Jared shot back, using the slang term for the creatures stalking Murdock's cages.

She huffed "Well I thought he'd be something at least a little more impressive."

"Hard to look impressive, when you've been confined to a table for three weeks."

Louise seceded to his logic.

"What do you think they were doing with him?" she asked

Jared shrugged

"We'll find out sooner or later. They have to let him up for air eventually."

John groaned as he once again faded back into consciousness.

But this time he found no harsh light shining above him, or the masked faces of strange scientists. This time, a homey incandescent light illuminated the smallish room. For the first time in he didn't know how long, he found he could sit up. He did so, discovering that he sat on a relatively nondescript bed, similar to a bunk he would find in any standard RRTS barracks. There was a small cupboard; he guessed was supposed to be a closet, to his right, a bed stand, and a separate chair. All that completed the bland room was the enclosed area in the corner which he assumed was a bathroom.

He looked up and spotted the sleek black bulb signifying a camera. He noted several others throughout the room.

Getting up he strode to the bathroom and check in there. Sure enough he found more.

_So much for privacy._

Turning back to the room he scanned for exits.

Just two. Pressure door and an air vent in the ceiling. A tiny air vent, literally maybe six inches wide.

The pressure door would be electrified to an extreme voltage, he could hear the humming of the current, enough voltage to cause third degree burns on contact. Though no issue for him, any extended exposure required to, maybe rip the door off, would knock him out cold. Then they'd just throw him chains once again. Why they suddenly chose to give him more "freedom", if you could call it that, he didn't know.

Then the door hissed open.

A soldier stepped through, high voltage stun gun in hand. John raised his hands signifying peace and took a step back. The soldier moved slightly to the side to let someone else pass.

The lithe blond woman darted into the room and lunged for him.

"John!"

He stared dumbfounded as she wrapped her arms around him in a bone crushing hug.

"Sam?"

After a few moments Sam finally released him, but the look she wore on her face was a conflicted combination of joy and seriousness.

"They wouldn't let me see you for weeks!" she exclaimed "What's going on?"

His response was delayed, the longer he was silent the more distressed Sam seemed to get. He finally spoke before she burst.

"I've been… detained." She had no idea just how literal he was being.

"John?" She said her eyes imploring "What have they been doing to you?"

"Absolutely nothing." Both siblings turned toward the origin of the voice.

The Lieutenant Coronel swept past the guard. Cold and purposeful as ever.

"Especially since he won't let us do anything." She continued then nodded to Sam "Lieutenant Coronel Naomi Wolfe, we've spoken over the phone."

Sam's fair face turned into a thunderhead.

"You're the one who refused all of my requests the last two weeks." She accused. Naomi nodded but ignored the woman doctor's irate tone.

"That is the issue we're here to address." She said looking directly at Reaper, standing beside his sister "I'm willing to grant you more… freedoms. If you agree to cooperate with our program."

Sam gaped at her.

"You call this _freedom_!" she exclaimed gesturing angrily to the small room. "He's your science experiment locked in your cupboard."

Wolfe's face remained passive; she looked to John for his answer. He exhaled slowly. She was hardly giving him a choice. This tiny room, or the hard steel table and inescapable nightmares.

"I'll do it."

Sam spun to face him.

"John!" she protested, but he interrupted her.

"Sam I don't have a choice."

"Yes, you do. You're a citizen, a soldier you don't have to do this!"

John opened his mouth to speak again, but this time the Lieutenant Coronel interrupted.

"I'm afraid you're wrong, Dr. Grimm. Master Sergeant Grimm doesn't have a choice, because his very existence makes him a threat to national security, of which there is a zero tolerance policy. If he ever leaves this facility without a military escort, he will be hunted down and killed on sight."

Sam turned from John to the woman, unable to accept the situation; she stumbled back from them. Sinking dejectedly onto the edge of the bed.

"But…" tears welled up from her eyes "You can't…"

"Oh and Doctor Grimm," Naomi continued examining the manicured nails of her right hand, a seemingly habitual gesture, "If you ever speak a word of this to the outside, you'll be disenfranchised immediately, and you will never be able to work in any lab or university ever again in the United States or any of its reputable allies."

Sam stared at the woman. Then she sighed heavily, turning to John, the tears leaking from her eyes.

"I'm so sorry John." She sobbed "I never meant for this to happen, I just didn't want to lose you."

He sat down beside her on the bed and hugged her "It's not your fault." he said quietly, trying to comfort his weeping sister.

"Don't look so helpless." Naomi snapped irritably "This is the United States Military not the KGB; it's not as if this is going to be the last time you'll ever see one another. Doctor Grimm will be fully capable of visiting the facility provided she follows the proper procedures and remains under the terms of our contract."

The guard beside the door cleared his throat. Naomi glanced in his direction and he tapped his watch. She nodded and turned back to the siblings.

"I'm afraid however; your time is almost up for today. I promise future visits will last much longer."

Sam sighed and stood slowly. She dried her eyes.

"See you soon Sam." John said she nodded and slipped past Wolfe out of the room.

The cold woman turned to him to speak one last time before she left.

"Things will get better Reaper, as long as you give us what we want."

"Yeah…" he trailed off staring beyond her to his retreating twin sister. The Lieutenant Coronel exited with the guard on her heels. The door sealed behind them. The hum of the electrified frame resumed. His gaze dropped to his feet.

"Like hell they will."

And so for two months he became their guinea pig. From physical strength analysis, to reflex and response, to psychological evaluation, they poked and prodded every aspect of his corporeal existence. They took blood and tissue samples, injected him with all manner drugs and poisons. Tested his rate of healing via cellular regeneration, and mapped his complete genome.

Every day they ran him through a system increasing the intensity of each test. How fast, how strong, how much could he take, and every day the same answer.

He took it, and he dealt it back.

Every material, save for what was genuinely indestructible, he bent or broke through. His reaction time and speed were beyond that of any soldier, or any human for that matter, and every drug, knife, or bullet sent his way he shrugged off in seconds.

John Grimm was man without limits.

As the prestige for his capabilities grew so did the prestige for his handler. The Lieutenant Coronel. The first day of tests she's give him a pair of black standard issue cammies and boots. Just the black cargo pants, and a black crew cut. She dressed him up and paraded him down the halls with the wall of armed men between him and everyone else. At first he'd been cuffed, but as the days past, the shackles were removed, and he walked unhindered down the halls.

The personnel of the facility gaped as he past. The higher ranking officers praised Naomi Wolfe as she passed, always at the head of her entourage.

She reveled in the attention. Beamed at her superiors and charmed them constantly. Often halting in the middle of the hall, all regard to schedule abandoned, just to speak with some Coronel or starred General, allowing the lower ranking personnel to ogle at his docility. Her more cult-like followers called her the woman who tamed the beast.

One day a few weeks into the tests, a high ranking general with bright eyes and a crinkled smile stopped her in the halls. She saluted the man and they exchanged amiable greetings. The man laughed with familiarity and the Lieutenant Coronel was all smiles.

The general had looked at him and nodded. Grimm had done nothing, maintained his stony disposition, waiting to continue to whatever simulation or test they had him slotted for next.

The general had laughed.

"Whatever did you do Ms. Wolfe to make this man so complacent?"

She had smiled and replied with "Anyone can be convinced, it only requires some persuasion."

The man had roared with laughter.

"Well if I know you, you probably threatened his family or his friends to get him to walk like a circus dog like that." He laughed again as though he told some great joke. Only John had seen the falter in Wolfe's smile. That tiny twitch under her eye.

When they finally moved on only he had caught the light muttering under her breath.

"Senile old bastard."

John continued to endure test after test. Sam visited every few weeks, making the time he spent locked away a little more tolerable. She told him about her research in Salt Lake City and what UAC was inventing or the new rocket plans proposed for their manned mission to one of Jupiter's moons. Sometimes she went off on some horribly in depth tangent about her work. He never interrupted her, never complained that he didn't understand.

Truth was. He did understand. He understood all of it perfectly. His neurons acted exponentially faster than they had before. Even with the scientific jargon, his brain just worked it out Sometimes he finished her points before she even fully explained the theory behind them.

However, whenever he did. Whenever anything related to his current condition came up, Sam fell silent. The look of guilt that stained her features and clouded her eyes was enough to tear his heart to pieces.

For two months Sam came and went, scientists came and went, and he sat in his prison cell awaiting the next time they wanted to run an MRI or measure how fast he could navigate and/or destroy their newest obstacle course.

He couldn't remember what day it was anymore. It had been mid-May when his team had gone to Olduvai. It must be late July, maybe August by now. He couldn't ask Sam, he didn't want her to worry over him.

Two months of the same routine, and he said good bye to Sam as the guard finally ushered her out after a particularly long stay. It was late; he was emotionally exhausted from seeing his sister, working to keep her happy. It wasn't as though he could even be physically exhausted anymore. So after the door shut behind her, he yawned and eyed the bed, but reconsidered.

Sleep was… hard to come by.

Shaking his head he stripped off his shirt and boots, tossing them in the corner, and climbed into bed.

As an afterthought he slipped off the dog tags they gave him, and dropped them on the bed stand.

In the morning he'd wake up and some generic breakfast would be sitting beside them along with a fresh pair of clothes.

The dog tags had arrived one morning like that. Unlike his old ones they carried only his name and rank and a serial number.

0001.

That was it. No address, social security number, creed, nothing. He'd been curious as to what happened to his old ones, along with all of his other possessions. Eventually he'd decided that it didn't matter anymore. Out of habit he'd slipped one tag off the chain and laced it on to his right boot, but the precaution was unnecessary now.

He pondered that a few moments before sleep over came him.

As per usual, nightmares.

He would thrash and mutter incoherently in his sleep before awakening with a start. In the past weeks, he stopped remembering his dreams. They vanished like smoke the instant his eyes opened, and, blissfully, didn't visit again for the rest of the night, but the eerie feeling always remained. The shadows became specters, their faces haunted him until he finally found sleep once more.

That next morning he awoke to find exactly what he expected waiting for him. Breakfast and clothes. But one thing was different this morning, something unlike any of the others. He sat and swung his feet over the edge. Directly in front of him, the pressure door hung wide open. Not a soul or guard in sight.

He stared at the open doorway. The prospect of freedom beckoning him. Ignoring the food he changed quickly and approached the door. The hum of electricity was absent. The frame was dead. He stepped through cautiously. His tag jingling softly against its chain around his neck.

He had no doubt he was being watched, just as he had no doubt they had imbedded a tracking device under his skin long before he ever awoke in their complex.

He continued, exiting the single hall to his cell out in the main hall of the complex. Cautiously he picked a direction and took it. Walking with no purpose or destination, just to figure out the game they played with him.

He strode down the hall, whispers and stares followed in his wake. Not long after entering the main hallway he had a tail on him. A uniformed guard followed him at a casual, but calculated distance.

They weren't even hiding the fact that they were watching him, they wanted him to know. This was just another goddamn test. Let's let him play with the other kids and see if he behaves.

The indignation swelled in him but he quashed it. There was no point, he was their dog and they knew it.

He turned the next corner and there she was. Once again he was face to face with his demon.

She noticed him immediately summoning him soundlessly with a look. It disgusted him the way she contorted _that_ face. The false smiles, and throaty laughs, always charming, hunting for her next victim, her next promotion.

"Master Sergeant Grimm." She said as he approached returning to her usual crisp demeanor "Are you enjoying your additional freedom?"

"The only additional _freedom_ you've given me is permission to cross the street without you holding my hand." He replied.

Her expression darkened.

"You should be grateful you're not still strapped to a table." She snapped "At least now you're being allowed more human contact."

"If you're referring to your peon whose been tailing me since I left your cell, that's not exactly socially fulfilling." He growled

If it was even possible, her face darkened substantially more, he felt as though a thunderhead was rumbling behind those eyes that flashed with anger. She started to turn away from him.

"Watch your tone Master Sergeant Grimm. Visits from Samantha can come to an end very quickly if you continuing acting insubordinately."

The threat hit him hard. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, upbraiding himself for being so reckless.

"My apologies Lieutenant Coronel Wolfe." He said stiffly controlling the anger in his voice. He came off condescending, but she nodded none the less.

"I'm glad we have an understanding." She replied and started to walk away. She paused as though remembering something.

"Oh and John," She called over her shoulder "We have nothing for you today, your free to do as you like."

Then she disappeared around the next corner.

He stood in the hall gritting his teeth, fists clenched. He wanted desperately to twist that woman's neck. To rip off that face, he'd never felt such intense, uncontrollable hatred of another person before. His anger showed, and several passersby were growing nervous of his stormy complexion. They shuffled past giving him a wide berth.

Noticing this John reined in his frustration. He turned back the way he'd come and decided he might as well find something to do. His life wasn't going to change anytime soon.

The past few months gave him limited opportunity to really "learn" the halls, so he lost his way several times as the hour wore on. His tail continued to lurk behind him. Eventually he found a familiar intersection, recalling a windowed room to the right that he'd passed on the way to some physical test or other, he took that corridor. Sure enough it was a rec-room for the guards and soldiers stationed in this sector of the base.

He skipped breakfast, obviously do to the lack of a closed cell door. Since awakening from his coma his appetite had returned with a vengeance. He grew hungry just like any normal person, but thanks to the physical enhancements, he was hungry on four times the normal scale, and right now he was famished. If he was going to find any food now it would be in the rec-room; it was too late for any of the mess halls, if he could find any, to be serving breakfast now.

He paused at the door with his hand on the handle. After a moment he berated himself for his hesitation. He was just looking for something to eat; he'd be in and out in a few minutes it's not as though he would actually have to speak to any of them if he didn't want to.

He opened the door and the room fell silent.

A group of kids, obviously fresh from boot camp, who had been tossing an orange back and forth in some game, froze. The other gaurds and soldiers stopped what they were doing to stare.

Evidently, his face was pretty well known.

Ignoring the stares, he walked across the room to the kitchen area. Opening the fridge, he grabbed a can of soda from the shelf not caring if the twelve pack was called by someone else or not. If it was, no one spoke up. Not finding much of anything else of he grabbed an apple and shut the fridge.

He snatched the nearly full bag of bagels off the counter then he spotted the table and chairs. Remembering his irritation from his earlier hesitation, he decided to go back on his original plan. No one was bothering him aside from the staring so he may as well eat here.

He sat at the table and cracked open the soda, putting his booted feet up. The beverage gave a familiar hiss; he snapped the tab off easily with one quick movement. Absentmindedly he crinkled the small shred of aluminum into a rough ball and dropped it on the table while he drank.

"You really don't look like some super soldier like everyone says."

What the hell had he been thinking.

John looked up reluctantly from his drink as the voice spoke. Directly in his line of sight, and well within his comfort zone, a young woman with dark brown hard and dark laughing eyes was staring at him intently.

He put down the soda and leaned back away from the woman.

"What exactly would you expect one to look like?" he asked taking a bite out of the apple.

She straightened and shrugged.

"I don't know I pictured something like Captain America, or Bucky Barnes, someone like that."

She then hopped up and sat on the edge of the table, staring intently at him. He glanced at her again, hoping that if he ignored her she'd leave, but she continued to watch him expectantly. He suppressed a sigh.

"I don't wear tights and both my arms are real." He said with a gruff edge, taking a moment to recall the two golden age superheros, and hoping his tone would help her take the hint to leave him alone.

It didn't.

The woman frowned and pouted. She opened her mouth to say something then thought better of it. Instead she settled for introductions.

"I'm Corporal Louise Hasar by the way," she said "that's my brother Jared over there also a Corporal." She gestured to a stoic young man of identical coloring leaning against the wall a ways away. He nodded to John in acknowledgment. Louise continued.

"The other guys around here call us Sonny and Cher." She said beaming.

John, picturing the Hollywood idols, gave a snort. Sonny and Cher's relationship, though legendary, had ended in divorce.

Louise gave him a quizzical look.

"What?" she demanded

John wiped away the small smirk and took another drink.

"Nothing..."

She frowned but let the comment slide. When John said nothing more she grew antsy.

"Aren't you going to tell us your name?" she asked finally.

He should have just taken the food and left. He stared at the door longingly, but getting up and leaving would only spark her interest even more. She seemed liable to follow him too so he gave in.

"It's John…" he said finally "Master Sergeant John Grimm RRTS Reaper." And then added ruefully,

"Though I don't think my rank really matters at this point."

On the far side of the room, the rest of its inhabitants, having recovered from the initial shock were back to their antics with the bruised orange.

One private was a little late in rejoining the others, encouraging another young soldier to be a smart ass.

"Think fast." The kid shouted as he hurled the fruit in the direction of his distracted team mate. The other boy panicked and ducked, allowing the fruit to hurtle toward the unsuspecting John Grimm.

Louise Hasar spotted the projectile too late.

"Look-!" she started to shout but her words caught in her throat at the slapping sound of orange on skin. She blinked.

Reaper caught the orange on reflex, the combination of his altered senses and speed made the movement instinctive and instantaneous. He barely glanced up from the table as he snatched the fruit from the air just seconds before it would have struck his head.

The room went silent again. He stood from his chair and looked toward the group of young men, their eyes fixed on him once more.

"Be careful where you throw that thing." He said tossing the orange to the smartass of the group who fumbled as he caught it.

"You might piss someone off."

The young man nodded vigorously, his mouth working though no sound came out. John picked up the empty can of soda and his and headed for the door. He crushed the can until it formed a small condensed ball of aluminum. Then he dropped the ball into the garbage pail beside the door, and strode out eating the apple as he went.


	8. Chapter 8

John really didn't see the point in repeated the events of the rec-room, but he couldn't bring himself to go back to that goddamn cage again. So he wandered.

He encountered plenty of locked doors with keypads and card readers, along with a guard posted at each one. After an hour or so he found he was entirely confined to one small section of the facility. A section primarily devoted to several gargantuan labs and holding cells, like his own, and a few sectors of living space for the scientists and rotating soldiers. "Small" was of course relative. This section was in fact massive and it would take him hours just to explore every hallway, let alone every room if he ever felt the need, but the number of hallways ending in a thick bulkhead of a door suggested that the main complex was absolutely sprawling without taking into account the multiple floors likely stretching further underground.

Another hour and he discovered the guards and soldiers swapped out around noon, the change in shifts. He didn't doubt they followed the same four-hour schedule that every branch of military followed.

He was growing bored and frustrated. Even without chains and bars he was far from free. The more he explored his small section of the complex the clearer his situation became and the more he wished Olduvai had never happened. The more he wished he could step out one door and into his old barracks with the rest of RRTS Unit 6.

To step through and be waiting with the rest of them for the transport to arrive for their six month leave, to get on the transport and be taken to his apartment in San Diego where he could relax and forget everything for a short time.

Yet he walked around another corner and there was another pristine hallway, a scientist speaking with a colleague or a couple of soldiers walking their rounds.

There was no normal life for him anymore.

He took a passage he hadn't taken before, leading him to a door marked maintenance. With nothing better to do he pulled open the door and entered into a narrow passage way. Despite the hairs on his neck reminding him he was still being watched, he continued down the tunnel of sorts. He came upon a small office for the maintenance workers but continued. He found that the floor turned into grating, railing on the sides, piping along the walls. As he walked, he followed bright red and yellow arrows and signs, with no real interest as to their meaning.

And then he came upon a door.

The most rudimentary door imaginable, with its thick manual hinges and push bar.

An old fashioned fire exit. Only slightly modified.

He tested the door feeling some sense of hope filling him, only to have it dashed when the door failed to move. In frustration he banged his fist hard against the barrier. To his mild chagrin the door dented outward and the lock holding the door closed snapped in half; it swung open. The alarm above the door started to buzz.

Sunlight flooded a small set of steps leading up to the surface.

He blinked away the bright light, but without hesitation, bounded up the stairs out into the open air.

He froze when he reached the top.

He was staring out at the open expanse of ground between him, and the perimeter fence of area 51.

A guard tower to his right, the man and his gun just barely visible, silhouetted against the pale blue sky.

The natural sunlight was blinding to his eyes which had grown to the indoor fluorescence. By reflex he sheltered eyes, but he continued anyway up the last step into the washed out late morning light.

He took in his barren surroundings. The door behind him sat set into a small concrete structure half buried by a dirt mound. Just beyond that a boxy concrete building. Identical sister buildings continued off in the background. He could see several massive hangers rising up beyond the featureless, desolate structures, but directly in front of him was the barbed wire, electrified perimeter fence. The first of many radiating out around the base until they encircled the entirety of the area known as Groom Lake.

In the distance the Lake itself, merely a flat expanse of white salt flats, sparkled and shimmered.

He took a few cautious steps forward; out the corner of his eye he registered movement in the guard tower.

They'd seen him, but still he continued forward until he reached the fence. He curled his fingers around the mesh work metal and felt the tingling of electricity through his hand. Just a tingle to him, but he guessed anyone else would be screaming right now.

He could rip all of this out of the ground and make a run for it.

And he wouldn't get beyond the next fence before they'd catch him.

Slowly his hand slipped from the fencing, he turned away and started back toward the fire exit. The man they had following him all morning was standing there waiting. He smirked and tapped the powerful stun gun at his belt, as though daring John to make a break for it.

Reaper looked beyond the man without expression as he approached, then brushed past indifferently.

His shoulder bumped the uniformed guard in the chest. The man stumbled back against the open door with a surprised grunt followed by a wheeze. The supposedly light contact had knocked the breath out of him.

After a few moments the guard recovered, but John was long gone down the dank narrow corridor back into the complex. With a fixed expression of grim resignation, he looked as though he were heading back to a place he knew could only be called hell.

The smooth bell tone rang from the speakers like deepened school bell, signifying the end of the forenoon watch and the beginning of the afternoon watch.

Louise got up from the lumpy couch and stretched.

"Time for work." She declared

Jared nodded and headed for the door. Naturally he and his sister would have the same assignment though only he cared to remember which one.

"We have Containment duty today." He said as he and his younger sister exited into the hallway now teaming with personnel heading either for work, lunch, or their living quarters.

Louise groaned loudly.

"I knew it was our turn." She griped.

Most soldiers in their sector of the base went through a cycle that determined where they were assigned each day. Guarding one sector or another, surveillance, watch tower, perimeter guard, etc. One particular assignment was specifically for Containment; the assigned soldiers assisted Dr. Murdock and his coworkers in the handling of the living specimens and were on hand in the case of quarantine breach.

Most men stationed at Area 51 were… disturbed… by the monsters in the basement and by the work done by Dr. Murdock. Few would say anything too loudly around the wrong people.

As expected, Containment duty was unanimously the least preferred shift.

Louise sulked as she tromped down the hall heading for the key specific elevator that would take them down into the bowels of the complex, and to the shrieking, moaning Imps waiting beneath in their cages. Beside her Jared remained stoic and indifferent to the idea. He rarely expressed his opinion on anything, he did his job and didn't ask questions.

The brass liked him for that. She found it infuriating that he could simply not care.

The siblings found themselves caught in a bulge in the traffic ahead as the flow of people narrowed and crowded together, skirting around something by the wall, at first she wrote it off as a spill or accident on the floor, but as she approached she realized it was in fact a person.

And not just any person, it was the dark-haired super soldier, the man she'd met just hours earlier, John Grimm. He was just leaning against the wall, arms crossed, letting the traffic pass and trying to stay out of the way. However, in doing so, he was slowing down the crowd even more as the skittish personnel crushed against one another in order to avoid coming too close to him.

Both she and Jared simply cut across gap as they passed him. Louise flashed Grimm her most charming smile. He glanced at her momentarily then stared off into the crowd with a blank expression, as he waited for the milling people to clear.

His lack of recognition reminded her of Jared immediately, and she felt the frustration rise again.

"Hard ass." She muttered and glared at her feet the rest of the way to Containment.

When they reached the elevator they were met by two other soldiers also assigned to their shift. On duty they referred to one another by call-sign. Today Sonny and Cher were assigned with a red headed wiz-kid Corporal call-sign Dex, and a large, beady-eyed Sergeant by the name of Denali.

The large man certainly conjured images of the mountain after which he was named, but his size did nothing to undermine his intelligence, and as the only the Sergeant among Corporals, he was in charge. They followed him into the elevator, swiping their individual ID cards as they went.

The elevator descended quickly to the bottom most floor, they stepped out and turned immediately down the hall for the door marked 'Armory'. Swiping cards again they entered the long narrow room, lined with racks of various guns.

"Stun gun, pistol, rifle." Denali barked then strode immediately to the nearest rack of assault rifles.

Each weapon carried a palm ID and was only armed when the computer system recognized the correct individual currently assigned to that specific shift at that specific armory. As they picked out their arsenal the computer purred out their Nellis Base IDs for each gun.

Once armed they filed out of the weapons vault sealing the door behind them and headed for the double door pressurized passage into the main containment facility.

The door opened with an ominous hiss and the sounds of snarling and gurgling howls drifted out to meet them. Louise almost cringed at the scent of decay wafting from the chamber.

The four marines entered, passing the former guard as they did so. Jared nodded to the four men exiting. They acknowledged him in return, the leader of the group, a strikingly tall sandy haired career Sergeant, nodded to the younger man in recognition.

"Jared." He said

"Leon." Jared replied

"I don't envy you this afternoon." The older man said pausing to stare back at the pale faced scientists scurrying about the cavernous room "There are horrors beyond what I thought these men could commit."

With that the large man turned on his heal, following the last of his group out.

The four of them exchanged nervous expressions, but continued anyway to check in with Dr. Murdock.

The blond haired scientists greeted them with obvious irritation.

"I asked for more labor today and still they give me just four." He snapped angrily, breaking his normally icy façade.

"You two." He barked pointed to Jared and Denali

"Go find Dr. Quinley next door and help him bring in our next subject." Then he looked at Louise and Dex.

"Get the Imp in chamber four sedated so we can extract."

The four soldiers split to their separate duties. Denali and Jared exiting the chamber once more.

Louise strode over to a rack adjacent to the cells holding the mutated monsters. They snarled at her as she passed. She tried her best to ignore them.

At the rack she swiped her ID card and pried a tranquilizer gun from the set of four. The weapon clicked and whined as the palm reader verified her ID and armed the weapon. She backed up and got a clear shot at the Imp in the fourth chamber. It let out a low gurgling hiss as it saw her.

She crinkled her nose in disgust and squeezed the trigger. The hiss and pop of the air powered rifle shot the sedative filled dart straight between the bars of the cage.

The Imp let out a yelp and stumbled backwards howling and snarling. After a few moments the creature fell silent.

Louise nodded to Dex and they approached the cage. She swiped her ID once more and the electric humming ceased as the thick barred door slid open.

"Stay away from the other cages." She instructed Dex as they entered. She threw on the strap for the tranquilizer, and tossed the gun over her shoulder out of the way while she grabbed a boney shoulder. Dex grabbed the other and they laboriously dragged the gruesome beast from the cell. As they reached the door, Dex miss stepped at the stoop, his sudden jerk of movement threw Louise off balance. She dropped her shoulder of the creature and stumbled back venturing too close to the adjacent cell.

The neighboring monster lashed out at her through the now unelectrified bars.

She ducked just barely in time to avoid a clawed limb, saving her head.

The Imp roared in frustration, displaying its long crowded fangs. A large pulsating mass ejected from its gruesome mouth.

"Fuck!" She shouted stumbling back from the writhing projectile. It slapped wetly to the ground by her feet. Squirming vainly, extending and retracting a circular pattern of teeth around its small mouth, searching blindly for a victim.

In horror and disgust she kicked the wriggling tongue away from her. Not taking her eyes off her snarling assailant she made her way back toward Dex who was gapping openly.

"Jesus…" he started she rounded on the nerdy young man

"Watch where the hell you stepping." She snapped

The Corporal nodded, she took up their sleeping monster's shoulder again and continued dragging the beast out of the cell. Once out Louise shut the gate and re-electrified the cell.

Murdock had watched the entire display without a hint of worry toward the near miss on Louise's life.

The two soldiers heaved the creature onto a gurney and strapped it down, just as Jared and Denali returned with Dr. Quinley and the new "subject" which turned out to be a young man. The rat like boy looked suspicious and distressed. He twitched and fidgeted between his larger guardsmen as they all but dragged him through the door. His bloodshot eyes glared at them through gaunt emaciated eye sockets.

He looked like a drug addict and by all means probably was.

Louise gave Jared a quizzical look, unsure as to what Murdock had meant by this druggy being the next test subject. Her older brother responded with a shrug but something in his eyes told her something different.

Murdock had the two men strap the boy to another gurney, he struggled, but his muscles were long since spent by his addictions. They handled him as they would a fussing child and strapped him down while he wailed a string of curses.

The other scientists had swarmed around the Imp and were using a syringe on the creature's tongue. They extracted a thick, saliva-like substance and immediately passed it on to Murdock.

He took the syringe and flipped on a lamp above the young man on the gurney, he flipped another switch on the light and a small camera lens attached to the arm whirled as it came to life.

Now utterly ignoring the small contingent of marines, another scientist scurried up to Murdock pulling out a digital voice recorder. He held it out toward Murdock and it the button.

Murdock waited for him to nod then spoke.

"Test subject three Jordan MacAster, sentenced to death for possession with intent to sell, four accounts of rape, and one account of murder in the second degree. Raw injection of C24 infectious agent, extracted approximately…" he glanced at his watch "12 seconds before administered."

Quickly Murdock inserted the needle into 'MacAster's left forearm.

"Time marked at 12:16 and 42 seconds." He stepped back from the young man, realizing the marines were standing agape he turned a cold stare on them.

"Get that Imp back in its cage." He ordered gesturing toward the sedated mutant.

Louise nodded and glanced at Jared. He followed her to the gurney and they wheeled the Imp back to its cell.

"What's going on Jared?" Louise whispered as her brother opened the gate. The door slid open and he returned to help her haul the creature back into its cell, this time staying well away from its aggressive neighbor.

"I don't know." Jared replied quietly "I think their trying to infect him with whatever infected these Imps in the first place."

"Why?" he glanced at his younger sister but her eyes were genuinely curious, she'd dropped the act this time.

"That guy… John Grimm. The same thing that turned those scientists from UAC into these things," he gestured to the Imp between them, "is what made him superhuman, or at least that's all I've managed to put together so far."

"So in other words they want more 'super soldiers'." She summarized "Sounds like some sci-fi movie."

Jared only shrugged. They pulled the Imp the rest of the way into the cell and left it where it lie.

They stepped out and the gate slid shut once more, its electrical buzzing resumed. Louise moved to replace the tranquilizer gun on the rack when Jared stopped her. He nodded to the gurney holding the imprisoned man, he was shaking and ever so slowly his twitchy, erratic movements were evolving into full blown convulsions. The gurney rocked back and forth.

Louise decided it was best to hang on to the tranquilizer just a little longer even with her other weapons. Denali glanced over at them. Seeing that Louise was holding on to her tranq-gun he motioned for Jared to do the same.

Jared responded with a curt nod and busied himself removing his own tranq from the rack.

Just as the gun armed its self with his palm ID, the screaming began.

Their heads snapped around instantly as the horrific sound filled the air.

The thin frame of the man strapped to the gurney writhed violently and contorted unnaturally. Any second the sound of breaking bones was going to rip through air. His skin turned an angry red and swelled. Suddenly there came a loud pop.

"Don't just stand there!" Murdock snapped at Denali and Dex who were both expressing varying degrees of shock "Get him in the holding cell!"

The two men leapt into action but there wasn't much time as the seams of the leather restraints began popping one by one. They struggled vainly with the gurney as the pained man atop it strained against its aluminum frame.

Jared tossed the strap of the tranq gun over his shoulder and bolted for the control panel to the large holding cell in the floor. He shoved the operating scientist out of the way and punched the button labeled "open".

There was a mechanical whine as the electrified grated ceiling of the cell split at the center and opened to the pit below.

"Go!" Jared ordered and the two men fought with the every more disfiguring MacAster to drag the entire gurney to the edge of the cell. At the edge of the cell where the widening gap intersected the rim the two men unceremoniously dumped MacAster into the cell. Gurney and all crashed to the floor ending up on its side with MacAster hanging from the failing restraints. Screaming.

Jared hurriedly smashed the button marked "closed" and the ceiling reversed directions until both ends joined once more in the center.

Dr. Murdock and the other scientists crowed the overlooking catwalk excitedly. Clipboards in hand, scribbling madly. Recording times, glancing hurriedly at their watches.

Not once did shame or horror cross their faces as the transformation continued, and the man wailed in agony. His bones snapped audibly and his skin tore. The blood welled and sprayed. The greatest expressions it garnered were the odd nose, scrunched in disgust, or a handkerchief against the smell of spilled bodily fluids.

The marines regrouped and remained silent. They dare not venture to the edge of the cell. Those familiar with battle knew the sight of a man's blood and his brain spatter across the wall with bits of skull and bone, but none of them dared face the sight that accompanied those screams.

Screams that, when they finally subsided, were only replaced by a bone chilling roar.

The beast in the pit, the creature that used to be the man by the name MacAster, paced and wailed like an angry cat.

It shied from the lights and slunk into the darkness away from the fascinated eyes of the scientists. After several minutes of stairs and whispers, rage welled in the beast stomach and it lashed out at the ceiling of its cage.

Its leap fell short causing only the more squeamish scientists to jump in surprise.

Frustrated, the beast roared.

It snatched up the gurney and flung the entire aluminum frame across the cell where it smashed into the electrified wall, letting loose a spray of sparks. The beast descended upon the gurney and ripped apart the metal frame, tearing loose strips of aluminum, which it flung up at the staring scientists.

Murdock watched with a passive expression as the shrapnel struck the grated ceiling, sparked, and were flung back by the electric current. He turned to the pale man beside him.

"Mark the test as inconclusive, no alternate variable found for the unrefined vaccine then put it with the others, and bring in the next subject."

The man nodded and scribbled a quick note on his clip-board; he then hurried off barking orders to the marines who were their security detail.

Jared found himself standing on the edge aiming into the cell. He fired with a pop and a hiss of compressed air, firing the dart that struck the newborn Imp in the upper bicep.

In a few moments the Imp swayed then toppled to the floor neutralized.

Jared and Denali were lowered into the pit to retrieve the beast and place it in a cell with its hell-mates. But before they completely did so, a horde of scientists were on them extracting the creature's infectious tongue.

No sooner was the Imp sealed away, then Louise and Dex arrived with yet another victim, and the process was repeated.

For eight hours, Jared and his three comrades in arms found themselves the helpers of death and horror. Murdock's face became the image of Satan, and the pale scientists who watched with desolate expression were his minions.

With each passing victim the transformations grew more violent and more strange. The Imps were evaluated on the spot and either put down or put out. Samples were extracted from the tongue of each Imp and used on the victim immediately after.

Louise found herself growing ill and Dex physically caved. At one-point vomiting on the console during a particularly grotesque sequence.

When the deepened bell tone reverberated through the dim and desolate chamber that was containment, the marines were numb and shaken. As the pressure doors opened to release them it was as if the gates of hell had finally been pried open for them to make their escape, and they did so without word. They brushed past the next security detail who glanced curiously at their pale and horror stricken faces.

But in eight hours. They would look the same.

As the horrors of Murdock's Containment sunk into their bones and turn them to dust.


	9. Chapter 9

John stared at the ceiling above him, grey and featureless but for the tiny air vent above his head. The legs of a spider appeared at the fins of the vent. Cautiously it crawled over the edge, trailing its silken thread behind it. One by one, it detached each of its eight spindly legs from the edge until only the thin, almost invisible thread, suspended it above the soldier below.

Gently, delicately it descended. He reached his hand up and let the spider land on his fingers. He turned his hand as it scurried across his knuckles.

John had never cared much for spiders. He was neither scared nor disgusted by them; they were just another creature in the world that passed him by, but now…

…now he envied the spider.

He wished he could simply slink up that thread and disappear into the vent. Then he could run far away from the suffocating confines of this bed, this cell, this place.

Run away from the terror stricken eyes, and uneasy glances.

From the open stares, and the sickening sent of fear that followed him no matter where he tried to hide. And he had tried, ever since the day they opened the door. When they let him out into their world.

A pup let into the backyard to play.

He was sick of being a dog, he rather be an insignificant spider. At least then his death would be quick, crushed under a boot or a newspaper. Then he could end these nightmares, monsters that crept along the dark edges of his mind and in his dreams. The faces that haunted him… _That_ face that haunted him.

He couldn't get those eyes out of his head. They weren't real, he knew that. The whole face wasn't real, yet she walked his dreams and brought horrors with her. He couldn't tell which of those monsters inside his head were real. The perverted forms of men that snarled with crowded crocked fangs, the hordes stinking squirming masses of flesh that ate him alive, the seven-foot-tall beast with trunks for legs and a bulbous head that smashed through walls, or the hounds that snarled and fought over his severed limbs.

The images were crowding together; he couldn't tell which of his dreams were memories anymore. Both were filled with blood and death.

She had to be real.

She wasn't just some modified duplicate of the woman that walked the sterile halls outside his cell.

No. That… that was the fake. That blue-eyed creature was nothing more than a painted doll with a plastered smile.

A bastardized copy of the person he remembered, a perverted replica.

His fist clenched in anger

But… even so he didn't understand this… attachment. The attachment to someone his scarcely remembered or knew. Someone he only ever had one true conversation with.

But it was that image that filled his nightmares, the image that surpassed even the eyes of his parents as they fell to their deaths. The image of Fang turning, and her eyes as the last ounce of humanity faded away.

He felt a small pain in his hand and his thoughts wandered back to the spider now trapped in his fist.

He opened his hand.

A small red lump on his palm had formed but due to his incredibly fast cellular response, it was disappearing quickly.

The spider however had been crushed in his fist, as a last effort to survive it had bitten him.

He stared at the mutilated carcass of the spider in his hand.

_At least it died quickly._

He brushed the spider away.

The door opened. He didn't look to see who it was. Sam hadn't visited in weeks, he wondered if she ever would again, or if they'd locked her out.

"Master Sergeant Grimm?" a voice said, a young man "I'm escorting you to your station today."

Station was just nice way of saying tests, make him feel like he's still doing something worthwhile instead of being a guinea pig.

John got up from the bed. He swept past the red-headed youth who shrunk away just like everyone else.

They sent a kid as his guard.

Oh how they had tamed him.

Louise was tired.

Her eyes were rimmed with purple as she trudged down the hall from her barracks to the mess.

She hadn't slept well in weeks, not since her shift in containment. And she was due for another very soon.

She didn't know if she could another eight hours of that. Of feeding men to the devil.

And the devils were changing.

She'd heard from the other soldiers, with each new Imp Murdock created in his experiments, the next Imp was a little bit bigger, a little stronger, or a little different.

She heard that now the creatures hardly resembled the original Imps, even that Murdock was practically breeding by type now. She'd heard that Murdock had several _varieties_ of Imps now. Different species and forms.

That scared her, because it meant Murdock wasn't just looking for a way to make super soldiers.

He wanted his own little demon farm.

He was administering the Imp saliva to other animals. Those that didn't die mutated into new species of Imps. Furthermore, Murdock was going to get bored with using drug devastated inmates.

He'd want fresher stock.

Maybe even soldiers.

The thought terrified her.

Becoming one of those creatures… she'd rather have Jared put a bullet in her brain.

She turned a corner and found the swinging doors to the mess. She pushed them open to a chorus of silverware on dishes as the massive gathering of the base's employees wolfed down breakfast.

As was habitual of human nature, the employees segregated themselves. Scientists stayed with other scientists, laborers with laborers, and security with security.

As such she spotted Jared among a table crowded with marines.

Next to him was an empty chair. Her's as always.

She made her way to the breakfast line and was greeted with a generous helping of scrambled eggs and sausage.

Once she secured her food she headed for the table with Jared and sat down.

Having barely shoveled her first fork full of eggs into mouth Jared dropped the expected bombshell.

"We have Containment duty tonight."

She choked on her eggs.

Jared gave her a pat on the back, but when she recovered she responded only with a groan.

"I still have nightmares from the first time, and we've only been down there once since Murdock started his experiments." She moaned.

"It was bound to happen sooner or later." He said simply "I just thought it would be better to tell you now rather than at noon."

Louise frowned at her brother then turned back to the food on her plate. She let out a heavy sigh and dropped her fork, appetite gone.

"How about telling me after breakfast next time."

Jared said nothing.

"Ah well little miss Cher you could always come join me for a little fun during your shift."

Louise looked up and spotted a tall chiseled man swaggering over to her table.

Sergeant Dorian Sullivan was his name, and he rivaled Jared when it came to good looks. He had the perfect angular features and high, almost feminine, cheek bones that you would see on the bare-chested porn stars who lounged on the covers of magazines and wore skimpy underwear to excite their devoted fans. However, while Jared was stoic, quiet, and reserved, Dorian was loud, audacious, and above all a womanizer, which explained his call sign.

Tom Cat.

He strutted through the halls eyeing his female coworkers with the hungry glint of a man who knew he could have his fill at anytime, because women truly did lie down at his feet.

Today he eyed Louise with that hunger, but she was far from amused.

"No thank you Dory." She said with a bright smile, but there was an irritable edge to her voice "But I really shouldn't shirk my responsibilities."

A barely perceptible shadow flitted across his face at the rejection, but in an instant it was gone again, replaced by the same charming smile.

"Oh don't worry Cherri. You won't be shirking any responsibilities, you and I have the same shift today."

He glanced at Jared and smirked. Then he lean forward and in a husky voice whispered in Louise's ear.

"That doesn't mean we can't make a little time in the weapons room."

Louise jerked away from him, a looked of disgust on her face.

"Find some other hole to fuck Dorian. Like a garbage disposal." She stood from her chair, the legs scrapping backwards loudly. Dorian caught her arm.

"Oh come on…"

He was interrupted as a hand shot out and snatched his wrist. The vice like grip twisted the hand until it released its hold on Louise. Dorian winced at the pain and glared at his captor.

He met Jared's steely eyes.

"Back off Dorian, I'm sick of listening to you disrespect my sister." Jared said darkly. Dorian sneered at the tall man but obliged. He wasn't looking for a fight.

"Fine sonny boy, but I'll see you both in Containment. And maybe then we really will have some fun."

He looked specifically at Louise for the last part. The hungry glint in his eyes sent a crawling sensation up her back. She shook it off and walked away, Jared following her. Even so she could feel though eyes boring into her back.

"Yeah… Today's gonna suck."

The twins had barely made it out of a mess hall when a security officer intercepted them.

"Corporal Louise Hasar and Corporal Jared Hasar." he said holding out a thick brown envelope "This is for you. The Lieutenant Coronel wants you both down in Containment right now."

The twins looked at each other quizzically, Jared took the envelope.

"What for?" he asked.

The security officer just shrugged, he had several other identical envelopes under his arm "Your orders are inside open them and read them while you're on your way."

He gave them a light salute then brushed past into the mess hall.

Louise heaved a heavy sigh.

"Gimme that."

Jared passed her the envelope and they started down the hall toward the elevator to containment.

She felt the envelope in her hands. It was a little heavy and lumpy from two lopsided objects inside. She tore off the top and slipped her hand to pull out the contents.

As she retracted her hand she pulled out what appeared to be a thick heavy duty wristwatch, but at about four times the size, with a thick, stiff plastic and Kevlar band. The blocky face of the watch was knobby and padded for shock proofing; it was a 4 by 2 inch rectangular screen that when worn laid flat along the length of your forearm.

Louise touch a button on the side and the screen came to life with fully holographic images projecting out from the face. The words Personnel Action Watch System appeared in liquid blue 3D graphics

"PAWS." She said turning the watch around in her hands.

"Cute."

Quickly she dug out the sister watch from inside the envelope and handed it to Jared who examined it with equal albeit reserved fascination.

But there was nothing else inside the envelope. Louise frowned but returned to examining the watch.

In just a few seconds she found what she was looking for. Inside the band was the equivalent of a rifle's palm reader. She put the watch on and it chirped. Words flashed across the screen.

"Verifying Wrist ID… Cher… Connecting to commlink… Standby…"

Realizing her comm was off Louise hurriedly flipped it on and inserted the ear piece into her ear. A light on the radio flashed and she glanced back at the PAWS screen.

"Link confirmed… entering database… track initiated… retrieving system feeds."

_Track?_ Louise barely had time to ponder the words on the screen when the Lieutenant Coronel herself appeared on the display of the watch. When the high ranking officer spoke her voice filtered through the ear piece of the comm.

"Good day soldiers," she said with unnatural sweetness that vanished as she continued "This is the Personnel Action Watch System or PAWS. This system replaces the former PDA system that was used previously. However, the purpose of this system is to map and track units throughout an environment, hence the name Personnel Action Watch. As in watching over. This system is meant to be used in the case of an outbreak. It can link with other similar systems and perform a mass scan for specific biological markers making tracking infections relatively simple. You and any other soldiers assigned a PAWS are now containment forces and will maintain continual circulating shifts guarding your assignments." The screen flickered.

"Loading primary assignment feeds."

The Lieutenant Coronel's face reappeared.

"You are assigned to Containment duty with Dr. Murdock as a part of a mass security detail for a high risk procedure to be performed by Dr. Murdock. Throughout the procedure you will run scans on all personnel including each other. If a scan comes up positive for infection then the infected is killed on site, no exceptions."

"Feed terminated."

"Shit just got real."

Both Jared and Louise jumped at the booming voice behind them. They stopped dead and spun around to face the person who had snuck up on them.

Sergeant Jesus "Chewy" Alverez let out a thunderous laugh at their starts and clapped both of them on the shoulder with massive dark hands. Jesus was an immigrant from Mexico who crossed the border at a young age. His parents took the jobs the entitled Americans wouldn't and weathered all the racism and shouted slurs that came with it. Jesus went to a public school in a low income neighborhood where the teachers were hopelessly under supported. Even so he excelled at his classes and now, years down the line, he had just been accepted to the officer's academy. He was due to transfer this month. As for his call sign, a part from being a popular Latino nickname, Star Wars Episode I-IX was the first movie series Jesus ever watched without needing Spanish subtitles and Chewbacca was his favorite character. So "Chewy" it was.

When Louise and Jared recognized the massive man and visibly relaxed he laughed again. He pointed to the identical PAWS on his own wrist.

"Going to same place eh." He said brightly, his jovial nature getting the best of him.

"We all four are wearing PAWS." He gestured widely to the person behind him who had gone unnoticed, obscured by this massive man.

Private First Class Ji-woo "Lady" Kyo was a small woman even despite Chewy's imposing girth. At petite 5'0" she was diminutive in comparison, but straight backed and practical she was incredibly intelligent and would not remain a PFC for long even with the unorthodox enlistment of a young Korean-American woman from a wealthy immigrant family to the military.

She also wore a PAWS device.

Lady nodded respectfully to Louise and Jared. Jared nodded back and Louise smiled.

Chewy grinned at them all.

"If we're all going to the same place we better get moving." Jared said and the group of four continued on their way to Containment.

The PAWS turned out to be more extensive than any of them had initially thought. They stepped from the elevator to the lower floors and all four of their devices came to life directing them to the armory. Once inside the PAWS linked with the computer system and then instructed them on what weapons to bring.

They found themselves taking tranquilizers, assault rifles, pistols, and even a machine gun each, off the racks which were noticeably bear.

When they reached Containment and entered they found out why.

There was already one full unit of marines there totaling eight people, their addition making it twelve.

However, they weren't the latest arrivals.

Swaggering in with three other men in tow Dorian Sullivan came through the pressure door. His gaze trained on Louise immediately.

She groaned.

"Fuck. My. Life." She hissed and made sure to put Chewy in between her and Dorian.

Louise distracted herself from the unpleasantries of Dorian's appearance and focused on the oddities of their situation.

With the last group there they totaled sixteen marines or two full units. That was a shit load of muscle. Furthermore, she didn't recognize at least half of the marines in the room. In fact, the only other people she recognized with the exception of her own group of four and Dorian were Denali, the Sergeant who had been with them during their first trip to Containment, and oddly enough, Dex. The redheaded Corporal from the same shift.

Next she observed their surroundings. Containment was almost exactly the same as she remembered from her last visit… almost.

The electrified cells housing Murdock's Imps were now encased in heavy duty blast shields.

It seemed odd to her until one of the creatures suddenly grew agitated and came into the light. It looked largely different from what she remembered. There was no longer barren muscle but a grayish sickly hued flesh stretched taunt; they were taller and spindlier. Suddenly the creature's mouth and teeth were bared in a soundless roar and it swung its long ropey arm tipped with the massive saber-like claws. A ball of fire… What the Fuck! A BALL OF FIRE… hurled across the cell from its hand and exploded on the glass. The flash drew the attention of the marines but there was no sound to accompany such and assault.

The blast shield was sound proof.

_Guess even Murdock got sick of the screaming._

She noticed the pit cell also had blast shields integrated in with the grating of its retractable ceiling.

But then she saw the thing that really scared her. Beyond the monsters and the strangeness. Beyond Dorian's hunger and Murdock's cold eyes watching her from his place among the scientists.

She saw a man, strapped to a gurney.

No.

Not just strapped.

Bolted down to a reinforced solid steel table.

Chained at the ankles and the wrists.

Iron belts across his chest and torso and legs.

The man was John Grimm. And he stared at the ceiling with the reserve of a man who wished for death.

The pressure door opened one final time. The Lieutenant Coronel entered. She seemed to tower over them in her clean pressed officer's uniform. When her gaze brushed over them it was as if she were appraising her livestock for the butcher or insects for her microscope.

She was followed by two lab-coated scientists who carried someone in between them.

A hooded woman. A scrawny almost emaciated girl with sallow skin wearing what appeared to be the torn remains of a linen shift over her entirely naked body. Hair flowed down her back from under the hood, but it was so matted with grime it was impossible to tell the shade. They dragged the girl into the chamber as the doors closed behind them leaving a thin, broken trail of blood smeared from her blistered, mangled feet which matched the raw scuffs on her knees.

They brought the girl to another gurney and strapped her down as well, but the hood stayed on and John Grimm never spared a glance.

There was hardly a reason for him to fight it now. A few weeks ago, the sight of the new Imps would have sent him into a virtuous rage, fueled by the horrors they so casually commit, turning men into demons.

But now he realized that he would accomplish nothing. He no longer had even the minute power that was granted to the lowest of American citizens. All he had was the stolen strength of a long since extinct race. And brute force would only bring him more pain.

To the outside world he was insignificant. There was no Master Sergeant John Grimm of RRTS Unit Six "Hell fighters".

And now even Sam, his only connection to the world, had seemingly vanished. It was as if all of this was just a nightmare. The dream of some scared child locked in a dark room in the depths of night and he, Sam, Sarge, Duke, Goat, Portman, the Lieutenant Coronel, were all just characters of a story fabricated within a trembling adolescent mind.

He just wished the child would wake up.

Maybe then his torture would end. That face would no longer intrude on his dreams, as he ceased to exist.

So he followed the redheaded mouse to Wolfe's basement of horrors. He had let the pale faced; hollow cheeked shadows of men strip him of his shirt and strap him down to the cold steel table. He drifted away as they dragged in yet another fading soul equally invisible as his own.

And now movement flurried around them. Murdock gave orders to the marines who scrambled to tranquilize an Imp in one of the cages. He heard its guttural howl erupt from beyond the sound proof barrier as they pushed it aside to take aim. The hiss of the air powered gun and the moan as the creature fell into a deep slumber. They must have pulled out its tongue; he heard the wet slap of a heavy mass landing in a metal bin.

He turned his head to see. He found his view clear or obscured depending on the rise and fall of the chest of a woman lying on the gurney. The scientists gathered around the pulsating mass appearing and disappearing beyond the boney wasted collar bones and jaundiced skin.

A breath.

There's a syringe

A breath.

The syringe punctures the writhing mass.

A breath.

Milky saliva fills the tub.

A breath.

He looks away.

A moment later he is surrounded by white coated men. He doesn't bother with their faces. They all look the same. He feels the needle in his arm and suddenly his veins are on fire.

His fists clench and the bonds groan as his muscles spasm. He lets out growl he half bites back. And then the fire recedes. His bones turn to jelly. Within seconds he is exhausted.

"Extract the blood quickly." Comes an urgent voice and he feels another needle pierce his arm at the crook of his elbow and the sensation of blood being drawn. He turns his head as the white coated men turn away from him and swarm the gurney beside him. Between their bodies he can glimpse the girl.

The hood comes off but he can only see her eyes and nothing else of her face. Grey eyes the color of a stormy morning and equally as tumultuous. Her eyes were feral and wide with fear. They swiveled wildly from person to person. She shied and shrank away from every contact. Strands of her wild and grimy hair clung wetly to her forehead with sweat.

One of them took pity on her and gave her arm a comforting pat.

"Don't touch me!" She shrieked and the restraints clanked dully as she jerked away.

There was something familiar about that voice. Something John couldn't place because the reintroduction of raw C24 had put him in a haze. He fought to clear it away but it wasn't till she started screaming that he remembered.

They came at her with the blood-filled syringe.

And she went ballistic. Howling and kicking her feet against the ankle shackles. She twisted and contorted her torso as she pulled at the straps on her wrists, but her muscles had long since wasted away from captivity and lack of nutrition. It took only one person to place a hand on her chest and force her down.

They forced the needle into her arm and she howled in fear.

The howl of a cornered beast.

A cornered wolf.

John's head whipped around immediately, searching until he found that face.

The bastardized mask with blue eyes.

She stood beyond the reinforced glass of the control room. Two men at the computer console in front of her. Her arms were crossed and patient.

She caught him looking and smiled.

He felt the pit of his stomach turn to ice and felt his heart waver.

Alexandria Wolfe was strapped to the gurney beside him. Screaming just as she had in his last… dreams… of her.

The rage roared within him. The disgust, the anger, the horror. Someone he remembered being a friend was being tortured. Tortured by their own blood. Their own kin. Naomi Wolfe was stripping away her little sister's humanity for the sake of her own goals.

* * *

She tried to fight but years of slavery had made her weak. She was just another victim of the underground. The trafficking of young girls and women as sex slaves for mob bosses and drug dealers, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians.

Taken from her family at a young age. From a family she no longer remembers. Only blank canvas where her parents' faces should be. She didn't remember birthdays or gifts, rides to school, family dinners. All she remembered anymore was rape and violation. The husky voice in her ear and the fists to her cheek. She remembered the soiled crates and scraps of rotten food.

And now there were soldiers and scientists and a woman with her face. The battering down of a door, gun fire, the rough hands pulling her from her cage and blindfolding her. The car ride and her first hot meal.

Oh God how good that meal had felt. Beef stew and potatoes running down her throat, rich with fat and pepper. The hot steaming bread rolls and a glass of milk. The warmth had spread from her belly into her entire body. Making her numb fingers feel again.

But now she wished she were a frozen corpse encased in ice and forgotten, deep within the frozen wastelands, the furthest North.

The fire in her veins was agony. Not just fire but molten metal, as if all the iron in her blood had melted and now flowed through her flesh. As though the burning gases of the sun whirled through her heart and scorched every fiber of muscle, every blood vessel, until her organs were charred and blackened, and her bones crumbled to ash.

She struggled vainly against the straps on her wrists and ankles, but she felt so weak and the pain was paralyzing. She screamed in fear and frustration, her eyes flitting wildly between the faces of the people around her.

Their eyes were so much different from the others. They were cold, deep pools of ice. Nothing like the hunger and the heat in the eyes of other men. It scared her even more.

A new wave of pain and she shrieked, twisting and fighting with the useless strength of a child, rational thought abandoned. A hand on her chest forcing her down and finally she gave in, feeling weaker and weaker.

Her bones groaned and she felt as though her rib cage was going to collapse in on her lungs with the weight on her chest. But the man who held her down barely looked as though he were exerting any effort on his behalf to hold her still.

Tears ran down her cheeks and a new heat was building within her.

It was over she couldn't do it.

She faded away.

Across the void of her comatose mind she heard screams.

The girl had fainted after just a few moments after the injection. Her entire body had flared an angry red and the muscles had crawled grotesquely beneath her skin. For a moment they thought she was changing. Soon to be just another exotic Imp.

But the convulsions had receded and she lay peacefully on the gurney, unconscious.

But they didn't have time to admire this quiet state of hers. They had forgotten who lay on the table beside them.

The Reaper was fucking pissed.

The rage that welled up inside of him was uncontainable. He felt the world turn red and his mind go blank. The steel straps across his arms may well have been made of tin foil for all the good they were at holding him down. He tore them apart. And once one wrist was free it became an arm and then another arm and then his chest. Before any of the scientists had had time to react he was tearing the straps off his ankles and lunging for the nearest throat.

The first man he caught earned a fist to the mouth that sent him reeling back into the gurney holding the girl. Dazed he stumbled away clutching his broken jaw just in time to be thrown aside as John shoved him hard into another scientist with a full arm swing to the ribs.

They snapped audibly and both scientist tumbled in a heap on the floor.

He turned on the others. They stared at him horrified and fled.

He caught an unlucky straggler by the back of his neck and smashed him into the concrete floor on his back, breaking his collar bone and shoulder blades.

The man spit up blood as he hit with the terminal force of a five story fall.

John was just about to go after the others when he heard a sound that made him stop on instinct.

The sound of a bullet entering the chamber.

He froze standing over the gurgling man. His fists clenched at his sides, making the veins of his arms pop out against his skin all the way up his arms to his neck.

Shirtless and breathing heavily more out of anger than exertion, he looked like beast waiting to charge.

He looked toward his would be attacker.

The one marine of sixteen that had the guts to make a move.

A lean dark haired man in the second row of stunned marines stepped forward. Aiming down the barrel of his assault rifle.

Aiming at his chest.

He knew him, met him once when he had been closer to human.

Jared.

Beyond him he saw the sister; she was staring at the scene in utter horror, her eyes wide with shock. All around her the marines and fumbled with their weapons. Few of them fast enough to comprehend what had just transpired.

Because one second John had been strapped to a table and the next three men were moaning on the ground.

He turned toward Jared and took a step.

"Stand down." The Corporal barked, the kid sounded like he belonged in the lead.

But John didn't stand down, he kept walking.

"Go head and shoot me." He said "Just how many bullets have you got?"

"I said stand down sir I won't warn you again." Jared repeated his voice not wavering. He took a step forward.

"Then don't warn me, do your fucking job Corporal!" he shouted.

_BANG!_

Jared lowered his rifle slowly a thin wisp of smoke faded away.

"Yes Sir." He said quietly and looked away.

John Grimm had taken the bullet full on in the chest. It hit him with unimaginable force as it smashed through his sternum.

Yet he didn't even stumble. The bullet passed through his chest and out his back in a spray of blood but an instant later the wound was healed.

The dark haired man, Jared, had known it was useless to fire a gun at him. He saw that as the corporal looked away.

He would get a medal and a promotion for his "attempt to subdue the enemy."

But right now, there were sixteen marines between John Grimm and the one person he wanted to kill.

Louise gaped as Grimm shook off the hit to his chest without even moment's pause. She had her own rifle out, but it sat forgotten in her hands. Jared appeared in front of her.

"Move." He hissed

"wha…"

"Just move."

He grabbed her arm and dragged her away from the marines.

"We're not safe right now, this whole thing was a set up to piss him off." He explained

"We're dog meat; they gave us some shiny toys to make us feel important, but once Grimm's done with us they'll release the hounds on him and see just how far he'll go to get what he wants."

"What do you mean what he wants?" Louise whispered as Jared brought them to an alcove near the control room. The alcove held a console that manually operated the air vent system, in case there was some sort of an emergency and the system needed to be over ridden.

Jared nodded toward the control room. The wrap around window gave them a partially obscured view of its occupants.

"The Lieutenant Coronel?" she asked in disbelief, he nodded.

"I've seen the way he looks at her when she's parading him around the base like a prized show dog. He hates her, not just a normal dislike, it's like her existence makes him sick, like she's some sort of a plague. And just now when they brought that girl in he snapped, and look where all of the other marines are conveniently standing."

She looked again; every single marine was congregated in the space between the control room and the gurneys which were positioned under a set of lights alongside the pit cell and its catwalks. It was the naturally open space found in every room with everything else positioned around it.

The only thing was that every marine was directly in between the Lieutenant Coronel, and John Grimm.

Realization dawned in her eyes.

"It's human nature," Jared continued, he started pulling out and checking his guns. "Humans beings with nothing to do congregate where they won't be in the way, they just didn't realize whose way they shouldn't be in."

The marines were growing nervous; almost all of them had their guns trained on the man before them.

The threat.

And John disregarded them all. His attentions were focused only the creature behind the glass.

He started forward.

BANG!

Louise jumped at the sound of the first gun going off.

She looked back. Grimm was popping his shoulder back into place. Dex was standing with the smoking gun clasped firmly between his trembling hands his feet spread wide beneath him to keep his balance after the recoil.

John gave his shoulder a flex as the joint popped back into the socket, dislodged slightly by the impact of the bullet. A storm gathered in his eyes and he took the invitation gladly, they were marines just doing their jobs.

But they were in his way.

He took a step.

Louise blinked and suddenly the rifles and hand guns of every marine not currently she or Jared roared to life. Spewing automatic fire directly at Grimm who vanished in their mitts.

She couldn't keep track of him, he was just too fast. She'd hear the scream or see the body slam into the ground but she never saw him.

There came a whistle and sharp ping in the wall just behind her head, the loose hair from her ponytail fluttered.

She and Jared both ducked out of reflex.

"Fuck." She snapped "I hate ricochets." They huddled closer to console, using the indent of the alcove as cover.

She heard a massive body smack the wall nearby and peered out cautiously.

Chewy was shaking off a badly split lip and a broken nose, he stumbled toward the alcove. Lady appeared beside him, one arm dangling uselessly by her side. They must have either spotted the alcove by chance or they saw Louise and Jared leave just before the shit hit the fan.

They didn't protest when the two new comers slid into the alcove beside them.

Between the console and the swivel chair bolted to the floor, the four of them just barely fit inside, but cover was cover.

"Some marines we are." Louise muttered softly turning to watch the carnage, rifle in hand.

"Even marines must flee from a force of nature."

Louise glanced back. Lady was nursing her busted arm, but her dark eyes were deep and mysterious as ever. Chewy chuckled.

"It won't be Grimm we'll have to worry about in a few minutes." Jared said darkly.

They all looked at him but his eyes were gazing toward the marines still standing. He was counting.

_Two lef… nevermind…_

Just as soon as he counted Grimm was dropping the last standing marines. Smashing the butt of a stolen rifle over one large Sergeant's head and spinning to nail the last guy in the stomach with the same gun.

"Jared," Louise started "what do you…" then she remembered

_"Once Grimm's done with us they'll release the hounds on him and see just how far he'll go to get what he wants."_

"Oh God…" she breathed "They're going to open the cages…"

"And let the demons loose." Jared finished for her.

Louise felt ill. It was Olduvai all over again. They'd scavenged the original Imps from the Earthside UAC facility and she'd heard about the mutilation. The half eaten, bloated corpses riddled with maggots and rats.

In a few minutes that would be them.

"Jared." She said weakly "We need to get out of here."

He looked at her then glanced back at men moaning on the ground.

"I know Louise." He said "I'm trying…"

"Jared…"

"I…"

Then the alarms sounded.

**AN: And that's what I have so far. Let me know what you think and any ideas you have.**


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